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One Third, More Or Less, Of All The Sorrow That The Person I Think I Am Must Endure Is Unavoidable. It Is The Sorrow Inherent In The Human Condition, The Price We Must Pay For Being Sentient And Self-conscious Organisms, Aspirants To Liberation, But Subject To The Laws Of Nature And Under Orders To Keep On Marching, Through Irreversible Time, Through A World Wholly Indifferent To Our Well-being, Toward Decrepitude And The Certainty Of Death. The Remaining Two Thirds Of All Sorrow Is Homemade And, So Far As The Universe Is Concerned, Unnecessary.

-Aldous Huxley

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One Third, More Or

Aldous Huxley

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One Third, More Or Less, Of All The Sorrow That The Person I Think I Am Must Endure Is Unavoidable. It Is The Sorrow Inherent In The Human Condition, The Price We Must Pay For Being Sentient And Self-conscious Organisms, Aspirants To Liberation, But Subject To The Laws Of Nature And Under Orders To Keep On Marching, Through Irreversible Time, Through A World Wholly Indifferent To Our Well-being, Toward Decrepitude And The Certainty Of Death. The Remaining Two Thirds Of All Sorrow Is Homemade And, So Far As The Universe Is Concerned, Unnecessary.

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We Objected To The Morality Because It Interfered With Our Sexual Freedom.

Meaninglessness

The Scent Organ Was Playing A Delightfully Refreshing Herbal Capriccio - Rippling Arpeggios Of Thyme And Lavender, Of Rosemary, Basil, Myrtle, Tarragon; A Series Of Daring Modulations Through The Spice Keys Into Ambergris; And A Slow Return Through Sandalwood, Camphor, Cedar And Newmown Hay (with Occasional Subtle Touches Of Discord - A Whiff Of Kidney Pudding, The Faintest Suspicion Of Pig's Dung) Back To The Simple Aromatics With Which The Piece Began. The Final Blast Of Thyme Died Away; There Was A Round Of Applause; The Lights Went Up.

It Takes Two To Make A Murder. There Are Born Victims, Born To Have Their Throats Cut, As The Cut-throats Are Born To Be Hanged.

The Gods Are Just. No Doubt. But Their Code Of Law Is Dictated, In The Last Resort, By The People Who Organize Society; Providence Takes Its Cue From Men.

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Given The Nature Of Spiders, Webs Are Inevitable. And Given The Nature Of Human Beings, So Are Religions. Spiders Can't Help Making Fly-traps, And Men Can't Help Making Symbols. That's What The Human Brain Is There For - The Turn The Chaos Of Given Experience Into A Set Of Manageable Symbols.

You Can't Make Flivers Without Steel - And You Can't Make Tragedies Without Social Instability. The World's Stable Now. People Are Happy; They Get What They Want, And They Never Want What They Can't Get. They're Well Off; They're Safe; They're Never Ill; They're Not Afraid Of Death; They're Blissfully Ignorant Of Passion And Old Age; They're Plagued With No Mothers Or Fathers; They've Got No Wives, Or Children, Or Lovers To Feel Strongly About; They're So Conditioned That They Pratically Can't Help Behaving As They Ought To Behave.

Words, Words, Words! They Shut One Off From The Universe. Three Quarters Of The Time One's Never In Contact With Things, Only With The Beastly Words That Stand For Them.

You've Got To Be Hurt And Upset; Otherwise You Can't Think Of The Really Good, Penetrating, X-rayish Phrases.

... One Reads, Above All, To Prevent Oneself Thinking.

Democracy Can Hardly Be Expected To Flourish In Societies Where Political And Economic Power Is Being Progressively Concentrated And Centralized. But The Progress Of Technology Has Led And Is Still Leading To Just Such A Concentration And Centralization Of Power.

I Know Quite Well That One Needs Ridiculous, Mad Situations Like That; One Can't Write Really Well About Anything Else. Why Was That Old Fellow Such A Marvelous Propaganda Technician? Because He Had So Many Insane, Excruciating Things To Get Excited About. You've Got To Be Hurt And Upset; Otherwise You Can't Think Of The Really Good, Penetrating, X-rayish Phrases.

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.

Science Has Explained Nothing; The More We Know The More Fantastic The World Becomes And The Profounder The Surrounding Darkness.

The Man Who Has Successfully Solved The Problem Of His Relations With The Two Worlds Of Data And Symbols Is A Man Who Has No Beliefs. With Regard To The Problems Of Practical Life He Entertains A Series Of Working Hypotheses, Which Serve His Purposes, But Are Taken No More Seriously Than Any Other Kind Of Tool Or Instrument. In Other Words, Symbols Should Never Be Raised To The Rank Of Dogmas, Nor Should Any System Be Regarded As More Than A Provisional Convenience.

The Vast Majority Of Human Beings Are Not Interested In Reason Or Satisfied With What It Teaches.

Wherever We Turn We Find That The Real Obstacles To Peace Are Human Will And Feeling, Human Convictions, Prejudices, Opinions. If We Want To Get Rid Of War We Must Get Rid First Of All Of Its Psychological Causes. Only When This Has Been Done Will The Rulers Of The Nations Even Desire To Get Rid Of The Economic And Political Causes.

Facts Are Ventriloquist’s Dummies. Sitting On A Wise Man’s Knee They May Be Made To Utter Words Of Wisdom; Elsewhere, They Say Nothing, Or Talk Nonsense, Or Indulge In Sheer Diabolism.

Cleanliness Is Next To Fordliness.

The Victim Of Mind-manipulation Does Not Know That He Is A Victim. To Him, The Walls Of His Prison Are Invisible, And He Believes Himself To Be Free.

The Question Of The Next Generation Will Not Be One Of How To Liberate The Masses, But Rather, How To Make Them Love Their Servitude.

A Gramme Is Better Than A Damn.

I've Never Discussed My Writing With Others Much, But I Don't Believe It Can Do Any Harm. I Don't Think That There's Any Risk That Ideas Or Materials Will Evaporate.

Assembled In A Crowd, People Lose Their Powers Of Reasoning And Their Capacity For Moral Choice.

In Spite Of Language, In Spite Of Intelligence And Intuition And Sympathy, One Can Never Really Communicate Anything To Anybody. The Essential Substance Of Every Thought And Feeling Remains Incommunicable, Locked Up In The Impenetrable Strong-room Of The Individual Soul And Body. Our Life Is A Sentence Of Perpetual Solitary Confinement.

The Business Of A Seer Is To See; And If He Involves Himself In The Kind Of God-eclipsing Activities Which Make Seeing Impossible, He Betrays The Trust Which His Fellows Have Tacitly Placed In Him.

It Is Because We Don't Know Who We Are, Because We Are Unaware That The Kingdom Of Heaven Is Within Us, That We Behave In The Generally Silly, The Often Insane, The Sometimes Criminal Ways That Are So Characteristically Human. We Are Saved, We Are Liberated And Enlightened, By Perceiving The Hitherto Unperceived Good That Is Already Within Us, By Returning To Our Eternal Ground And Remaining Where, Without Knowing It, We Have Always Been.

If You Have Behaved Badly, Repent, Make What Amends You Can And Address Yourself To The Task Of Behaving Better Next Time.

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‎"but That's The Price We Have To Pay For Stability. You've Got To Choose Between Happiness And What People Used To Call High Art. We've Sacrificed The High Art.

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Most Men And Women Lead Lives At The Worst So Painful, At The Best So Monotonous, Poor And Limited That The Urge To Escape, The Longing To Transcend Themselves If Only For A Few Moments, Is And Has Always Been One Of The Principal Appetites Of The Soul.

The Goal In Life Is To Discover That You’ve Always Been Where You Were Supposed To Be.

To Travel Is To Discover That Everyone Is Wrong About Other Countries.

Societies Are Composed Of Individuals And Are Good Only Insofar As They Help Individuals To Realize Their Potentialities And To Lead A Happy And Creative Life.

Sixty Two Thousand Four Hundred Repetitions Make One Truth. Idiots!

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I Used To Think I Had No Will To Power. Now I Perceive That I Vented It On Thoughts, Rather Than People. Conquering An Unknown Province Of Knowledge. Getting The Better Of A Problem. Forcing Ideas To Associate Or Come Apart. Bullying Recalcitrant Words To Assume A Certain Pattern. All The Fun Of Being A Dictator Without Any Risks And Responsibilities.

Marble, I Perceive, Covers A Multitude Of Sins.

Never Have So Many Been Manipulated So Much By So Few.

I Am I, And I Wish I Weren't.

When People Are Suspicious With You, You Start Being Suspicious With Them.

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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.

Dedicated To All Those Who Say: "i Don't Have Time For Analytics" Or "i Don't Understand Analytics".

Grace Is Always Sufficient, Provided We Are Ready To Cooperate With It. If We Fail To Do Our Share, But Rather Choose To Rely On Self-will And Self-direction, We Shall Not Only Get No Help From The Graces Bestowed On Us, We Shall Actually Make It Impossible For Further Graces To Be Given.

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.

Dying Is Almost The Least Spiritual Of Our Acts, More Strictly Carnal Even Than The Act Of Love. There Are Death Agonies That Are Like The Strainings Of The Costive At Stool.

What’s The Point Of Truth Or Beauty Or Knowledge When Anthrax Bombs Are Popping All Around You?

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I Was Born Wandering Between Two Worlds, One Dead, The Other Powerless To Be Born, And Have Made, In A Curious Way, The Worst Of Both.

Applied Science Is A Conjuror, Whose Bottomless Hat Yields Impartially The Softest Of Angora Rabbits And The Most Petrifying Of Medusas.

The Humanity Of Men And Women Is Inversely Proportional To Their Numbers. A Crowd Is No More Human Than An Avalanche Or A Whirlwind. A Rabble Of Men And Women Stands Lower In The Scale Of Moral And Intellectual Being Than A Herd Of Swine Or Of Jackals.

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.

A Man May Be A Pessimistic Determinist Before Lunch And An Optimistic Believer In The Will's Freedom After It.

Primroses And Landscapes, He Pointed Out, Have One Grave Defect: They Are Gratuitous. A Love Of Nature Keeps No Factories Busy. It Was Decided To Abolish The Love Of Nature, At Any Rate Among The Lower Classes. . . . It Was Essential That They Should Keep On Going To The Country, Even Though They Hated It.

I Wanted To Change The World. But I Have Found That The Only Thing One Can Be Sure Of Changing Is Oneself.

Intellectuals ... Regard Over-simplification As The Original Sin Of The Mind And Have No Use For The Slogans, The Unqualified Assertions And Sweeping Generalizations.

All The Advantages Of Christianity And Alcohol; None Of Their Defects.

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There Are So Many Intellectual And Moral Angels Battling For Rationalism, Good Citizenship, And Pure Spirituality; So Many And Such Eminent Ones, So Very Vocal And Authoritative! The Poor Devil In Man Needs All The Support And Advocacy He Can Get. The Artist Is His Natural Champion. When An Artist Deserts To The Side Of The Angels, It Is The Most Odious Of Treasons.

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.

Books Have Their Destinies Like Men. And Their Fates, As Made By Generations Of Readers, Are Very Different From The Destinies Foreseen For Them By Their Authors. Gulliver's Travels, With A Minimum Of Expurgation, Has Become A Children's Book; A New Illustrated Edition Is Produced Every Christmas. That's What Comes Of Saying Profound Things About Humanity In Terms Of A Fairy Story.

Experience Teaches Only The Teachable.

In Real Life There Is No Such Person As The Average Man.

The Flower Of The Present Rosily Blossomed.

Every Gain Made By Individuals Or Society Is Almost Instantly Taken For Granted.

There Are Confessable Agonies, Sufferings Of Which One Can Positively Be Proud. Of Bereavement, Of Parting, Of The Sense Of Sin And The Fear Of Death The Poets Have Eloquently Spoken. They Command The World's Sympathy. But There Are Also Discreditable Anguishes, No Less Excruciating Than The Others, But Of Which The Sufferer Dare Not, Cannot Speak. The Anguish Of Thwarted Desire, For Example.

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.

The Religions Whose Theology Is Least Preoccupied With Events In Time And Most Concerned With Eternity, Have Been Consistently Less Violent And More Humane In Political Practice. Unlike Early Judaism, Christianity And Mohammedanism (all Obsessed With Time) Hinduism And Buddhism Have Never Been Persecuting Faiths, Have Preached Almost No Holy Wars And Have Refrained From That Proselytizing Religious Imperialism Which Has Gone Hand In Hand With Political And Economic Oppression Of Colored People.

Work Is Prayer. Work Is Also Stink. Therefore Stink Is Prayer.

Hitler's Vast Propaganda Successes Were Accomplished With Little More Than The Radio And Loudspeaker, And Without Tv And Tape And Video Recording . . . Today The Art Of Mind Control Is In The Process Of Becoming A Science.

The Deepest Sin Against The Human Mind Is To Believe Things Without Evidence.

Wherever The Choice Has Had To Be Made Between The Man Of Reason And The Madman, The World Has Unhesitatingly Followed The Madman.

It Takes A Certain Amount Of Intelligence And Imagination To Realize The Extraordinary Queerness And Mysteriousness Of The World In Which We Live.

The Real Hopeless Victims Of Mental Illness Are To Be Found Among Those Who Appear To Be Most Normal. Many Of Them Are Normal Because They Are So Well Adjusted To Our Mode Of Existence, Because Their Human Voice Has Been Silenced So Early In Their Lives That They Do Not Even Struggle Or Suffer Or Develop Symptoms As The Neurotic Does. They Are Normal Not In What May Be Called The Absolute Sense Of The Word; They Are Normal Only In Relation To A Profoundly Abnormal Society.

One Of The Great Attractions Of Patriotism - It Fulfills Our Worst Wishes. In The Person Of Our Nation We Are Able, Vicariously, To Bully And Cheat. Bully And Cheat, What's More, With A Feeling That We Are Profoundly Virtuous.

A Whole Population Of Strangers Inhabited And Shaped That Little Body, Lived In That Mind And Controlled Its Wishes, Dictated Its Thoughts...the Name Was An Abstraction, A Title Arbitrarily Given, Like "france" Or "england," To A Collection, Never Long The Same, Of Many Individuals Who Were Born, Lived, And Died Within Him, As The Inhabitants Of A Country Appear And Disappear, But Keep Alive In Their Passage The Identity Of The Nation To Which They Belong.

War Is Often Described As A Law Of Nature-this Is Not True: Among The Lower Animals, War Is Unknown.

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.

An Intellectual Is A Person Who's Found One Thing That's More Interesting Than Sex.

Morality Is Always The Product Of Terror; Its Chains And Strait-waistcoats Are Fashioned By Those Who Dare Not Trust Others, Because They Dare Not Trust Themselves, To Walk In Liberty.

To His Dog, Every Man Is Napoleon; Hence The Constant Popularity Of Dogs.

A Democracy Which Makes Or Even Effectively Prepares For Modern, Scientific War Must Necessarily Cease To Be Democratic. No Country Can Be Really Well Prepared For Modern War Unless It Is Governed By A Tyrant, At The Head Of A Highly Trained And Perfectly Obedient Bureaucracy.

Complete Prohibition Of All Chemical Mind Changers Can Be Decreed, But Cannot Be Enforced, And Tends To Create More Evils Than It Cures.

What The Rest Of Us See Only Under The Influence Of Mescalin, The Artist Is Congenitally Equipped To See All The Time.

I Had Motives For Not Wanting The World To Have Meaning; Consequently Assumed That It Had None, And Was Able Without Any Difficulty To Find Satisfying Reasons For This Assumption ... For Myself, As No Doubt, For Most Of My Contemporaries, The Philosophy Of Meaninglessness Was Essentially An Instrument Of Liberation. The Liberation We Desired Was Simultaneous Liberation From A Certain Political And Economic System, And Liberation From A Certain System Of Morality. We Objected To The Morality Because It Interfered With Our Sexual Freedom.

Love Is As Necessary To Human Beings As Food And Shelter; [but] Without Intelligence, ... Love Is Impotent And Freedom Unattainable.

Along This Particular Stretch Of Line No Express Had Ever Passed. All The Trains--the Few That There Were--stopped At All The Stations. Denis Knew The Names Of Those Stations By Heart. Bole, Tritton, Spavin Delawarr, Knipswich For Timpany, West Bowlby, And, Finally, Camlet-on-the-water.

It Is Only When We Have Renounced Our Preoccupation With "i," "me," "mine," That We Can Truly Possess The World In Which We Live. Everything, Provided That We Regard Nothing As Property. And Not Only Is Everything Ours; It Is Also Everybody Else's.

Every Individual Is At Once The Beneficiary And The Victim Of The Linguistic Tradition Into Which He Has Been Born.

Impulse Arrested Spills Over, And The Flood Is Feeling, The Flood Is Passion, The Flood Is Even Madness: It Depends On The Force Of The Current, The Height And Strength Of The Barrier. The Unchecked Stream Flows Smoothly Down Its Appointed Channels Into A Calm Well Being.

I Have Always Found That Angels Have The Vanity To Speak Of Themselves As The Only Wise.

God Isn't Compatible With Machinery And Scientific Medicine And Universal Happiness. You Must Make Your Choice. Our Civilization Has Chosen Machinery And Medicine And Happiness.

In The Contexts Of Religion And Politics, Words Are Not Regarded As Standing, Rather Inadequately, For Things And Events; On The Contrary Things And Events Are Regarded As Particular Illustrations Of Words.

Religion And Politics

Generalities Are Intellectually Necessary Evils.

Life Is Short And Information Endless: Nobody Has Time For Everything

Asceticism, It Is Evident, Has A Double Motivation. If Men And Women Torment Their Bodies, It Is Not Only Because They Hope In This Way To Atone For Past Sins And Avoid Future Punishments; It Is Also Because They Long To Visit The Mind's Antipodes And Do Some Visionary Sightseeing.

It's Dark Because You Are Trying Too Hard. Lightly Child, Lightly. Learn To Do Everything Lightly. Yes, Feel Lightly Even Though You're Feeling Deeply. Just Lightly Let Things Happen And Lightly Cope With Them. So Throw Away Your Baggage And Go Forward. There Are Quicksands All About You, Sucking At Your Feet, Trying To Suck You Down Into Fear And Self-pity And Despair. That's Why You Must Walk So Lightly. Lightly My Darling.

In A Word, They Failed To Take Into Account Man's Almost Infinite Appetite For Distractions.

The Critics Don't Interest Me Because They're Concerned With What's Past And Done, While I'm Concerned With What Comes Next.

The Secret Of Genius Is To Carry The Spirit Of The Child Into Old Age, Which Mean Never Losing Your Enthusiasm.

Universal Education Has Created An Immense Class Of What I May Call The New Stupid, Hungering For Certainty Yet Unable To Find It In The Traditional Myths And Their Rationalizations.

To Be Enlightened Is To Be Aware, Always, Of Total Reality In Its Immanent Otherness - To Be Aware Of It And Yet Remain In A Condition To Survive As An Animal. Our Goal Is To Discover That We Have Always Been Where We Ought To Be. Unhappily We Make The Task Exceedingly Difficult For Ourselves.

I Am Entirely On The Side Of Mystery. I Mean, Any Attempt To Explain Away The Mystery Is Ridiculous. I Believe In The Profound And Unfathomable Mystery Of Life Which Has A Sort Of Divine Quality About It.

The Poet's Place, It Seems To Me, Is With The Mr. Hydes Of Human Nature.

Human Beings Act In A Great Variety Of Irrational Ways, But All Of Them Seem To Be Capable, If Given A Fair Chance, Of Making A Reasonable Choice In The Light Of Available Evidence. Democratic Institutions Can Be Made To Work Only If All Concerned Do Their Best To Impart Knowledge And To Encourage Rationality. But Today, In The World's Most Powerful Democracy, The Politicians And The Propagandists Prefer To Make Nonsense Of Democratic Procedures By Appealing Almost Exclusively To The Ignorance And Irrationality Of The Electors.

Words Play An Enormous Part In Our Lives And Are Therefore Deserving Of The Closest Study.

In All Activities Of Life, The Secret Of Efficiency Lies In An Ability To Combine Two Seemingly Incompatible States: A State Of Maximum Activity And A State Of Maximum Relaxation.

To Talk About Religion Except In Terms Of Human Psychology Is An Irrelevance.

The Inconveniences And Horrors Of The Pox Are Perfectly Well Known To Every One; But Still The Disease Flourishes And Spreads. Several Million People Were Killed In A Recent War And Half The World Ruined; But We All Busily Go On In Courses That Make Another Event Of The Same Sort Inevitable. Experientia Docet? Experientia Doesn't.

How Difficult It Is To Sound Persuasive At The Top Of One's Voice!

The Silent Bear No Witness Against Themselves.

At This Point We Find Ourselves Confronted By A Very Disquieting Question: Do We Really Wish To Act Upon Our Knowledge?

Good Is A Product Of The Ethical And Spiritual Artistry Of Individuals; It Cannot Be Mass-produced.

We Tend To Think And Feel In Terms Of The Art We Like; And If The Art We Like Is Bad Then Our Thinking And Feeling Will Be Bad. And If The Thinking And Feeling Of Most Of The Individuals Composing A Society Is Bad, Is Not That Society In Danger?

God: A Gaseous Vertebrate.

All Gods Are Homemade, And It Is We Who Pull Their Strings, And So, Give Them The Power To Pull Ours.

To See Ourselves As Others See Us Is A Most Salutary Gift. Hardly Less Important Is The Capacity To See Others As They See Themselves.

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.

The Old Idea That Words Possess Magical Powers Is False; But Its Falsity Is The Distortion Of A Very Important Truth. Words Do Have A Magical Effect - But Not In The Way That Magicians Supposed, And Not On The Objects They Were Trying To Influence. Words Are Magical In The Way They Affect The Minds Of Those Who Use Them.

If You Don't Gamble, You'll Never Win.

In Spiritual Matters, Knowledge Is Dependent Upon Being; As We Are, So We Know.

What Drivel It All Is!... A String Of Words Called Religion. Another String Of Words Called Philosophy. Half A Dozen Other Stringscalled Political Ideals. And All The Words Either Ambiguous Or Meaningless. And People Getting So Excited About Them They'll Murder Their Neighbours For Using A Word They Don't Happen To Like. A Word That Probably Doesn't Mean As Much As A Good Belch. Just A Noise Without Even The Excuse Of Gas On The Stomach.

Liberties Are Not Given, They Are Taken.

In The Course Of History Many More People Have Died For Their Drink And Their Dope Than Have Died For Their Religion Or Their Country.

A Mind That Has Come To The Stillness Of Wisdom Shall Know Being, Shall Know What It Is To Love. Love Is Neither Personal Nor Impersonal. Love Is Love, Not To Be Defined Or Described By The Mind As Exclusive Or Inclusive. Love Is Its Own Eternity; It Is The Real, The Supreme, The Immeasurable.

You Should Hurry Up And Acquire The Cigar Habit. It's One Of The Major Happinesses. And So Much More Lasting Than Love, So Much Less Costly In Emotional Wear And Tear.

Pure Spirit, One Hundred Degrees Proof - That's A Drink That Only The Most Hardened Contemplation-guzzlers Indulge In. Bodhisattvas Dilute Their Nirvana With Equal Parts Of Love And Work.

The Greatest Triumphs Of Propoganda Have Been Accomplished, Not By Doing Something, But By Refraining From Doing. Great Is Truth, But Still Greater, From A Practical Point Of View, Is Silence About Truth.

Brave New World

Of Course The Dharma-body Of The Buddha Was The Hedge At The Bottom Of The Garden. At The Same Time, And No Less Obviously, It Was These Flowers, It Was Anything That I - Or Rather The Blessed Not-i - Cared To Look At.

Reality, No Matter How Utopian, Seems To Be Something People Need To Frequently Take A Holiday From.

A Life-worshipper's Philosophy Is Comprehensive. He Is At One Moment A Positivist And At Another A Mystic: Now Haunted By The Thought Of Death And Now A Dionysian Child Of Nature; Now A Pessimist And Now, With A Change Of Lover Or Liver Or Even The Weather, An Exuberant Believer That God's In His Heaven And All's Right With The World.

If We Evolved A Race Of Isaac Newtons, That Would Not Be Progress. For The Price Newton Had To Pay For Being A Supreme Intellect Was That He Was Incapable Of Friendship, Love, Fatherhood, And Many Other Desirable Things. As A Man He Was A Failure; As A Monster He Was Superb.

Nothing Short Of Everything Will Really Do.

Only One More Indispensable Massacre Of Capitalists Or Communists Or Fascists Or Christians Or Heretics, And There We Are In The Golden Future.

A Poor Degenerate From The Ape, Whose Hands Are Four, Whose Tail's A Limb, I Contemplate My Flaccid Shape And Know I May Not Rival Him Save With My Mind.

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 .

Uncontrolled, The Hunger And Thirst After God May Become An Obstacle, Cutting Off The Soul From What It Desires. If A Man Would Travel Far Along The Mystic Road, He Must Learn To Desire God Intensely But In Stillness, Passively And Yet With All His Heart And Mind And Strength.

And Along With Indifference To Space, There Was An Even More Complete Indifference To Time. "there Seems To Be Plenty Of It", Was All I Would Answer When The Investigator Asked Me To Say What I Felt About Time. Plenty Of It, But Exactly How Much Was Entirely Irrelevant. I Could, Of Course, Have Looked At My Watch But My Watch I Knew Was In Another Universe. My Actual Experience Had Been, Was Still, Of An Indefinite Duration. Or Alternatively, Of A Perpetual Present Made Up Of One Continually Changing Apocalypse.

Champagne Had The Taste Of An Apple Peeled With A Steel Knife.

People Believe In God Because They've Been Conditioned To Believe In God.

Brave New World Character

Facts Do Not Cease To Exist Because They Are Ignored.

In The Course Of Evolution Nature Has Gone To Endless Trouble To See That Every Individual Is Unlike Every Other Individual....physically And Mentally, Each One Of Us Is Unique. Any Culture Which, In The Interests Of Efficiency Or In The Name Of Some Political Or Religious Dogma, Seeks To Standardize The Human Individual, Commits An Outrage Against Man's Biological Nature.

It Is Natural To Believe In God When You're Alone-- Quite Alone, In The Night, Thinking About Death.

Actual Happiness Always Looks Pretty Squalid In Comparison With The Overcompensations For Misery. And, Of Course, Stability Isn't Nearly So Spectacular As Instability. And Being Contented Has None Of The Glamour Of A Good Fight Against Misfortune, None Of The Picturesqueness Of A Struggle With Temptation, Or A Fatal Overthrow By Passion Or Doubt. Happiness Is Never Grand.

We Participate In A Tragedy; At A Comedy We Only Look.

The Traveller's-eye View Of Men And Women Is Not Satisfying. A Man Might Spend His Life In Trains And Restaurants And Know Nothing Of Humanity At The End. To Know, One Must Be An Actor As Well As A Spectator.

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.

I'd Rather Be Myself," He Said. "myself And Nasty. Not Somebody Else, However Jolly.

Brave New World Technology

Our Conviction That The World Is Meaningless Is Due In Part To The Fact (discussed In A Later Paragraph) That The Philosophy Of Meaningless Lends Itself Very Effectively To Furthering The Ends Of Political And Erotic Passion; In Part To A Genuine Intellectual Error - The Error Of Identifying The World Of Science, A World From Which All Meaning Has Deliberately Been Excluded, With Ultimate Reality.

The Trouble With Fiction," Said John Rivers, "is That It Makes Too Much Sense. Reality Never Makes Sense.

Words Form The Thread On Which We String Our Experiences.

To Be Excited Is Still To Be Unsatisfied.

Every Notable Advance In Technique Or Organization Has To Be Paid For, And In Most Cases The Debit Is More Or Less Equivalent To The Credit. Except Of Course When It's More Than Equivalent, As It Has Been With Universal Education, For Example, Or Wireless, Or These Damned Aeroplanes. In Which Case, Of Course, Your Progress Is A Step Backwards And Downwards.

Deprived Of Their Newspapers Or A Novel, Reading-addicts Will Fall Back Onto Cookery Books, On The Literature Which Is Wrapped Around Bottles Of Patent Medicine, On Those Instructions For Keeping The Contents Crisp Which Are Printed On The Outside Of Boxes Of Breakfast Cereals. On Anything.

Words Can Be Like X-rays If You Use Them Properly -- They’ll Go Through Anything. You Read And You’re Pierced.

Several Excuses Are Always Less Convincing Than One.

We Now Spend A Good Deal More On Drink And Smoke Than We Spend On Education. This, Of Course, Is Not Surprising. The Urge To Escape From Selfhood And The Environment Is In Almost Everyone Almost All The Time.

A Type Of Revolutionary Novelty May Be Extremely Beautiful In Itself; But, For The Creatures Of Habit That We Are, Its Very Novelty Tends To Make It Illegible, At Any Rate To Begin With.

Industrialization Is The Systemic Exploitation Of Wasting Assets. In All Too Many Cases, The Thing We Call Progress Is Merely An Acceleration In The Rate Of That Exploitation.

Industrialization

One Believes Things Because One Has Been Conditioned To Believe Them.

Brave New World Technology

Happiness Is Never Grand.

The Innocence Of Those Who Grind The Faces Of The Poor, But Refrain From Pinching The Bottoms Of Their Neighbour's Wives! The Innocence Of Ford, The Innocence Of Rockefeller! The Nineteenth Century Was The Age Of Innocence--that Sort Of Innocence. With The Result That We're Now Almost Ready To Say That A Man Is Seldom More Innocently Employed Than When Making Love.

Lying In Bed, He Would Think Of Heaven And London.

The Christian Idea Of A Perfect Heaven That Is Something Other Than A Non-existence Is A Contradiction In Terms.

Bondage Is The Life Of Personality, And For Bondage The Personal Self Will Fight With Tireless Resourcefulness And The Most Stubborn Cunning.

The Lunatic Fringe Is More Like A Spanish Shawl, Where The Fringe Makes Up The Entire Garment.

There Is Something Curiously Boring About Somebody Else's Happiness.

Liberate Yourselves From Everything You Know And Look With Complete Innocence At This Infinitely Improbable Thing Before You.

Our Business Is To Wake Up. We Have To Find Ways In Which To Detect The Whole Of Reality In The One Illusory Part Which Our Self-centered Consciousness Permits Us To See. We Must Not Live Thoughtlessly, Taking Our Illusion For The Complete Reality, But At The Same Time We Must Not Live Too Thoughtfully In The Sense Of Trying To Escape From The Dream State. We Must Be Continuously On Watch For Ways In Which We May Enlarge Our Consciousness.

Every Ceiling Reached Becomes A Floor.

Happiness Is Not Achieved By The Conscious Pursuit Of Happiness; It Is Generally The By-product Of Other Activities.

The Effects Which Follow Too Constant And Intense A Concentration Upon Evil Are Always Disastrous. Those Who Crusade, Not For God In Themselves, But Against The Devil In Others, Never Succeed In Making The World Better, But Leave It Either As It Was, Or Sometimes Even Perceptibly Worse Than It Was, Before The Crusade Began. By Thinking Primarily Of Evil We Tend, However Excellent Our Intentions, To Create Occasions For Evil To Manifest Itself.

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.

Beauty Is Worse Than Wine, It Intoxicates Both The Holder And Beholder.

You Shall Know The Truth, And The Truth Shall Make You Mad.

My Fate Cannot Be Mastered; It Can Only Be Collaborated With And Thereby, To Some Extent, Directed. Nor Am I The Captain Of My Soul; I Am Only Its Noisiest Passenger.

All That Happens Means Something; Nothing You Do Is Ever Insignificant.

Actual Happiness Always Looks Pretty Squalid In Comparison With The Over-compensations For Misery.

Brave New World

From Their Experience Or From The Recorded Experience Of Others (history), Men Learn Only What Their Passions And Their Metaphysical Prejudices Allow Them To Learn.

Death Is The Only Thing We Haven't Succeeded In Completely Vulgarizing.

We Live Together, We Act On, And React To One Another; But Always, And In All Circumstances, We Are By Ourselves.

Doors Of Perception

Nothing — The Only Perfection, The Only Absolute. Infinite And Eternal Nothing.

I Want To Know What Passion Is. I Want To Feel Something Strongly.

There's Only One Effectively Redemptive Sacrifice, The Sacrifice Of Self-will To Make Room For The Knowledge Of God.

Can We Unite Against Ourselves For Our Own Higher Interest?

Man Is Hypnotized By The Glitter Of His Own Gadgetry

The Older Dictators Fell Because They Could Never Supply Their Subjects With Enough Bread, Enough Circuses, Enough Miracles, And Mysteries. Under A Scientific Dictatorship, Education Will Really Work' With The Result That Most Men And Women Will Grow Up To Love Their Servitude And Will Never Dream Of Revolution. There Seems To Be No Good Reason Why A Thoroughly Scientific Dictatorship Should Ever Be Overthrown.

When An Artist Deserts To The Side Of The Angels, It Is The Most Odious Of Treasons.

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.

Every Individual Is At Once The Beneficiary And The Victim Of The Linguistic Tradition Into Which He Has Been Born - The Beneficiary Inasmuch As Language Gives Access To The Accumulated Records Of Other People's Experience, The Victim In So Far As It Confirms Him In The Belief That Reduced Awareness Is The Only Awareness And As It Bedevils His Sense Of Reality, So That He Is All Too Apt To Take His Concepts For Data, His Words For Actual Things.

Drill And Uniforms Impose An Architecture On The Crowd. An Army's Beautiful. But That's Not All; It Panders To Lower Instincts Than The Aesthetic. The Spectacle Of Human Beings Reduced To Automatism Satisfies The Lust For Power. Looking At Mechanized Slaves, One Fancies Oneself A Master.

Liberty? Why It Doesn't Exist. There Is No Liberty In This World, Just Gilded Cages.

Real Orgies Are Never So Exciting As Pornographic Books. In A Volume By Pierre Louys All The Girls Are Young And Their Figures Perfect; There's No Hiccoughing Or Bad Breath, No Fatigue Or Boredom, No Sudden Recollections Of Unpaid Bills Or Business Letters Unanswered, To Interrupt The Raptures. Art Gives You The Sensation, The Thought, The Feeling Quite Pure--chemically Pure, I Mean,... Not Morally.

If The Men Of The Middle Ages... Lived In Filth And Discomfort, It Was Not For Any Lack Of Ability To Change Their Mode Of Life; It Was Because They Chose To Live This Way, Because Filth And Discomfort Fitted In With Their Principles And Prejudices, Political, Moral, And Religious.... It Was In The Power Of Medieval... Craftsmen To Create Armchairs And Sofas That Might Have Rivaled In Comfort Those Of Today

As Political And Economic Freedom Diminishes, Sexual Freedom Tends Correspondingly To Increase. And The Dictator Will Do Well To Encourage That Freedom...it Will Help To Reconcile His Subjects To The Servitude Which Is Their Fate.

Literary Or Scientific, Liberal Or Specialist, All Our Education Is Predominantly Verbal And Therefore Fails To Accomplish What It Is Supposed To Do. Instead Of Transforming Children Into Fully Developed Adults, It Turns Out Students Of The Natural Sciences Who Are Completely Unaware Of Nature As The Primary Fact Of Experience, It Inflicts Upon The World Students Of The Humanities Who Know Nothing Of Humanity, Their Own Or Anyone Else's.

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.

Reality Cannot Be Ignored Except At A Price; And The Longer The Ignorance Is Persisted In, The Higher And More Terrible Becomes The Price That Must Be Paid.

Every Ceiling, When Reached, Becomes A Floor, Upon Which One Walks As A Matter Of Course And Prescriptive Right

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