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One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons-that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to believe in God.

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
Things
Conditioned
People
Believes
Findings
Finding
Reasons
Philosophy
Reason
Believe

More quotes by Aldous Huxley

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That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent.
Aldous Huxley
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Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.
Aldous Huxley
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Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.
Aldous Huxley
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We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability.
Aldous Huxley
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Assemble a mob of men and women previously conditioned by a daily reading of the newspapers treat them to amplified band music, bright lights...and in next to no time you can reduce them to a state of almost mindless subhumanity. Never before have so few been in a position to make fools, maniacs, or criminals of so many.
Aldous Huxley
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Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything, will really do.
Aldous Huxley
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Sleep is the most blessed and blessing of all natural graces.
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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Since Mozart's day composers have learned the art of making music throatily and palpitatingly sexual.
Aldous Huxley
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Given a fair chance, human beings can govern themselves, and govern themselves better
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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Did you eat something that didn't agree with you? asked Bernard. The Savage nodded I ate civilization.
Aldous Huxley
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Nothing is more dreadful than a cold, unimpassioned indulgence. And love infallibly becomes cold and unimpassioned when it is too lightly made.
Aldous Huxley
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We are so anxious to achieve some particular end that we never pay attention to the psycho-physical means whereby that end is to be gained. So far as we are concerned, any old means is good enough. But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify the means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.
Aldous Huxley
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If you look up 'Intelligence' in the new volumes of the Encyclopeadia Britannica, you'll find it classified under the following three heads: Intelligence, Human Intelligence, Animal Intelligence, Military. My stepfather's a perfect specimen of Intelligence, Military.
Aldous Huxley
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In the days before machinery men and women who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists. Now they sit still and permit professionals to entertain them by the aid of machinery. It is difficult to believe that general artistic culture can flourish in this atmosphere of passivity.
Aldous Huxley
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Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.
Aldous Huxley
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Such prosperity as we have known it up to the present is the consequence of rapidly spending the planet's irreplaceable capital.
Aldous Huxley
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Can we unite against ourselves for our own higher interest?
Aldous Huxley
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No man ever dared to manifest his boredom so insolently as does a Siamese tomcat when he yawns in the face of his amorously importunate wife.
Aldous Huxley