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The pursuit of truth is just a polite name for the intellectual's favorite pastime of substituting simple and therefore false abstractions for the living complexities of reality.

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
Simple
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Living
False
Substituting
History
Favorite
Abstractions
Art
Intellectual
Complexities
Reality
Therefore
Pastime
Truth
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Abstraction
Philosophy
Polite
Names
Complexity

More quotes by Aldous Huxley

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Man's life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so to come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground.
Aldous Huxley
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A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.
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Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity
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If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.
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Peace is a necessary condition of spirituality, no less than an inevitable result of it.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is to learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Aldous Huxley
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So now you can let go, my darling...Let go...Let go of this poor old body. You don't need it anymore. Let it fall away from you. Leave it lying there like a pile of worn-out clothes...Go on, my darling, go on into the Light, into the peace, into the living peace of the Clear Light.
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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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If human beings were shown what they're really like, they'd either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.
Aldous Huxley
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Only a person with a Best Seller mind can write Best Sellers.
Aldous Huxley
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In books, the proportion of exceptional to commonplace people is high in reality, very low.
Aldous Huxley
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Every ceiling reached becomes a floor.
Aldous Huxley
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The moral peril to humanity of thoughtlessly accepting these conveniences [of materialism] (with their inherent disadvantages) as constituting a philosophy of life is now becoming apparent. For the implications of this disruptive materialism... are that human beings are nothing but bodies, animals, machines.
Aldous Huxley
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At this point we find ourselves confronted by a very disquieting question: Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge?
Aldous Huxley
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Modern man's besetting temptation is to sacrifice his direct perceptions and spontaneous feelings to his reasoned reflections to prefer in all circumstances the verdict of his intellect to that of his immediate intuitions.
Aldous Huxley
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The thing that impresses me most about this country is its hopefulness. It is this which distinguishes it from Europe, where there is hopeless depression and fear.
Aldous Huxley
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Sleep is the most blessed and blessing of all natural graces.
Aldous Huxley
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For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.
Aldous Huxley
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If the Prince of Peace should come to earth, one of the first things he would do would be to put psychiatrists in their place.
Aldous Huxley
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One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.
Aldous Huxley