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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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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
Nothing
Greater
Population
Ruled
Knowledge
Material
Rulers
Happy
Intelligent
Interfere
Freedom
Materials
Dread
Desire
Comfort
Provided
Truth
Told
Beliefs
Dreads
Part
Responsibility
Perfectly
Comforts
Better
Belief
Desires
Cherished

More quotes by Aldous Huxley

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An intellectual is a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex.
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At their first appearance innovators have always been derided as fools and mad men.
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Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy.
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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.
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Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held.
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This really revolutionary revolution is to be achieved, not in the external world, but in the souls and flesh of human beings.
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The nature of oratory is such that there has always been a tendency among politicians and clergymen to oversimplify complex matters. From a pulpit or a platform even the most conscientious of speakers finds it very difficult to tell the whole truth.
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Ultimate Reality is not clearly and immediately apprehended except by those who have made themselves loving, pure in heart and poor in spirit.
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By comparison with a night-club, churches are positively gay.
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And that, put in the Director sententiously, that is the secret of happiness and virtue — liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.
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We can't allow science to undo its own good work.
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For particulars, as everyone knows, make for virtue and happiness generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.
Aldous Huxley
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Which is better: to have fun with fungi or to have Idiocy with ideology, to have wars because of words, to have tomorrow's misdeeds out of yesterday's miscreeds?
Aldous Huxley
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In life, man proposes, God disposes.
Aldous Huxley
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Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.
Aldous Huxley
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Every gain made by individuals or society is almost instantly taken for granted.
Aldous Huxley
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I am ignorant and impotent and yet, somehow or other, here I am, unhappy, no doubt, profoundly dissatisfied ... In spite of everything I survive.
Aldous Huxley
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It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.
Aldous Huxley
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Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.
Aldous Huxley
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But a priest's life is not supposed to be well-rounded it is supposed to be one-pointed - a compass, not a weathercock.
Aldous Huxley