Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.
ALDOUS HUXLEYIn regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or the propaganda might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies.
More Aldous Huxley Quotes
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Experience teaches only the teachable.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
The Bhagavad-Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. It is one of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed; hence its enduring value is subject not only to India but to all of humanity.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
At this point we find ourselves confronted by a very disquieting question: Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge?
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
The greater part of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and desires nothing better than to be told what to do. Provided the rulers do not interfere with its material comforts and its cherished beliefs, it is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
But today, in the world’s most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
Round pegs in square holes tend to have dangerous thoughts about the social system and tend to infect others with their discontents.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
To be well informed, one must read quickly a great number of merely instructive books. To be cultivated, one must read slowly and with a lingering appreciation the comparatively few books that have been written by men who lived, thought, and felt with style.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
People often ask me what is the most effective technique for transforming their life. It is a little embarrassing that after years and years of research and experimentation, I have to say that the best answer is – just be a little kinder.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
The development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
The world is an illusion, but an illusion which we must take seriously.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
Every man’s memory is his private literature.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
Armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence – those are the three pillars of Western prosperity.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
Human beings act in a great variety of irrational ways, but all of them seem to be capable, if given a fair chance, of making a reasonable choice in the light of available evidence. Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him, the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
A mind that has come to the stillness of wisdom shall know being, shall know what it is to love. Love is neither personal nor impersonal. Love is love, not to be defined or described by the mind as exclusive or inclusive. Love is its own eternity; it is the real, the supreme, the immeasurable.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
In all activities of life, the secret of efficiency lies in an ability to combine two seemingly incompatible states: a state of maximum activity and a state of maximum relaxation.
ALDOUS HUXLEY -
So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.
ALDOUS HUXLEY