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Facts are ventriloquist’s dummies. Sitting on a wise man’s knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.

Aldous Huxley

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Aldous Huxley
Age: 69 †
Born: 1894
Born: July 26
Died: 1963
Died: November 22
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Professor
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Godalming
Surrey
Aldous Leonard Huxley
Men
Wisdom
Utter
Talk
Indulge
Words
Sheer
Science
Elsewhere
Facts
Nonsense
Ventriloquist
May
Knees
Dummies
Nothing
Sitting
Dummy
Made
Wise
Knee

More quotes by Aldous Huxley

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Of course the Dharma-body of the Buddha was the hedge at the bottom of the garden. At the same time, and no less obviously, it was these flowers, it was anything that I - or rather the blessed Not-I - cared to look at.
Aldous Huxley
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Man has an almost infinite capacity for taking things and people for granted and thereby missing out on the pleasure of being grateful that things aren't worse and of praising and thereby lifting the spirits of others.
Aldous Huxley
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Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the flood is passion, the flood is even madness.
Aldous Huxley
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The critics don't interest me because they're concerned with what's past and done, while I'm concerned with what comes next.
Aldous Huxley
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...we were back at home, and I had returned to that reassuring but profoundly unsatisfactory state known as 'being in one's right mind.
Aldous Huxley
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Pure Spirit, one hundred degrees proof - that's a drink that only the most hardened contemplation-guzzlers indulge in. Bodhisattvas dilute their Nirvana with equal parts of love and work.
Aldous Huxley
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In any race between human numbers and natural resources, time is against us.
Aldous Huxley
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... 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
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I think that fiction and, as I say, history and biography are immensely important, not only for their own sake, because they provide a picture of life now and of life in the past, but also as vehicles for the expression of general philosophic ideas, religious ideas, social ideas.
Aldous Huxley
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God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.
Aldous Huxley
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Every man's memory is his private literature.
Aldous Huxley
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Most kings and priests have been despotic, and all religions have been riddled with superstition.
Aldous Huxley
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... one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking.
Aldous Huxley
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You all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk.
Aldous Huxley
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It's a very salutary thing to realize that the rather dull universe in which most of us spend most of our time is not the only universe there is. I think it's healthy that people should have this experience.
Aldous Huxley
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To write fiction, one needs a whole series of inspirations about people in an actual environment, and then a whole lot of work on the basis of those inspirations.
Aldous Huxley
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Family, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness, a narrow channelling of impulse and energy.
Aldous Huxley
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Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic it is merely a form of emotional masturbation.
Aldous Huxley
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At any given moment, life is completely senseless. But viewed over a period, it seems to reveal itself as an organism existing in time, having a purpose, trending in a certain direction.
Aldous Huxley
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Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.
Aldous Huxley