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Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare, it is simply disgraceful.

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
Disgraceful
Single
Claiming
Simply
Cows
Animal
Shakespeare
Wells
Obsession
Well
Belong
Species
Baboons
Mindedness
Atheism

More quotes by Aldous Huxley

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Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.
Aldous Huxley
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There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it.
Aldous Huxley
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Most loverspicture to themselves, in their mistresses, a secret reality, beyond and different from what they see every day. They are in love with somebody else--their own invention. And sometimes there is a secret reality and sometimes reality and appearance are the same. The discovery, in either case, is likely to cause a shock.
Aldous Huxley
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Fortunately, however, birds don't understand pep talks. Not even St. Francis'. Just imagine, he went on, preaching sermons to perfectly good thrushes and goldfinches and chiff-chaffs! What presumption! Why couldn't he have kept his mouth shut and let the birds preach to him?
Aldous Huxley
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It is only when it takes the form of physical addiction that sex is evil. It is also evil when it manifests itself as a way of satisfying the lust for power or the climber's craving for position and social distinction.
Aldous Huxley
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My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.
Aldous Huxley
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The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg- eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.
Aldous Huxley
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Man is unique in organizing the mass murder of his own species.
Aldous Huxley
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Most vices demand considerable self-sacrifices. There is no greater mistake than to suppose that a vicious life is a life of uninterrupted pleasure. It is a life almost as wearisome and painful -- if strenuously led -- as Christian's in The Pilgrim's Progress.
Aldous Huxley
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Ignore death up to the last moment then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?
Aldous Huxley
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Our kingdom go is the necessary and unavoidable corollary of 'Thy kingdom come.' For the more there is self, the less there is of God. The divine eternal fulness of life can be gained only by those who have deliberately lost the partial, separative life of craving and self-interest, of egocentric thinking, feeling, wishing, and acting.
Aldous Huxley
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Did you eat something that didn't agree with you? asked Bernard. The Savage nodded I ate civilization.
Aldous Huxley
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The more stitches, the less riches.
Aldous Huxley
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That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep.
Aldous Huxley
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When an artist deserts to the side of the angels, it is the most odious of treasons.
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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The artists who the world has always recognized as the greatest are those with the widest sympathy. The greatness of the great artist depends precisely on the width and the intensity of his sympathy.
Aldous Huxley
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All that is needed is money and a candidate who can be coached to look sincere. Political principles and plans for specific action have come to lose most of their importance. The personality of the candidate, the way he is projected by the advertising experts, are the things that really matter.
Aldous Huxley
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Speed, it seems to me, provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.
Aldous Huxley
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People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
Aldous Huxley