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After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one's mind one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking.

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
Reading
Reads
Form
Indulgence
Self
Prevent
Mind
Vice
Thinking
Addiction
Like
Vices
Tickle
Oneself
Amuse
Drink
Excessive

More quotes by Aldous Huxley

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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
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Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice.
Aldous Huxley
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I dread the inevitable acceleration of American world domination which will be the result of it all...Europe will no longer be Europe.
Aldous Huxley
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Half at least of all morality is negative and consists in keeping out of mischief. The lords prayer is less than 50 words long, and 6 of those words are devoted to asking god not to lead us into temptation.
Aldous Huxley
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Industrial civilization is only possible when there's no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning.
Aldous Huxley
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Generalized intelligence and mental alertness are the most powerful enemies of dictatorship and at the same time the basic conditions of effective democracy.
Aldous Huxley
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Don't try to behave as though you were essentially sane and naturally good. We're all demented sinners in the same cosmic boat - and the boat is perpetually sinking.
Aldous Huxley
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We shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence.
Aldous Huxley
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The best way to find things out is not to ask questions at all. If you fire off a question, it is like firing off a gun - bang it goes
Aldous Huxley
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My sympathies are, of course, with the Government side, especially the Anarchists for Anarchism seems to me more likely to lead to desirable social change than highly centralized, dictatorial Communism .
Aldous Huxley
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Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
Aldous Huxley
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It isn’t only art that is incompatible with happiness, it’s also science. Science is dangerous, we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.
Aldous Huxley
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The most distressing thing that can happen to a prophet is to be proved wrong. The next most distressing thing is to be proved right.
Aldous Huxley
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Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying.
Aldous Huxley
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Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.
Aldous Huxley
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Proportion ... You can't help thinking about it in these London streets, where it doesn't exist ... It's like listening to a symphony of cats to walk along them. Senseless discords and a horrible disorder all the way ... We need no barbarians from outside they're on the premises, all the time.
Aldous Huxley
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No man, however civilized, can listen for very long to African drumming, or Indian chanting, or Welsh hymn singing, and retain intact his critical and self-conscious personality.
Aldous Huxley
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The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.
Aldous Huxley
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The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar... Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen.
Aldous Huxley
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Art, I suppose, is only for beginners, who have made up in their minds to be content with symbols rather than with what they signify, with the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner.
Aldous Huxley