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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.

-Aldous Huxley

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The Innocence Of Those

Aldous Huxley

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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.

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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.

That We Are Not Much Sicker And Much Madder Than We Are Is Due Exclusively To That Most Blessed And Blessing Of All Natural Graces, Sleep.

Can We Unite Against Ourselves For Our Own Higher Interest?

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

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.

All Right Then," Said The Savage Defiantly, "i'm Claiming The Right To Be Unhappy.

Brave New World

I'm Sick. I've Eaten Civilisation And I'm Sick.

Human Contacts Have Been So Highly Valued In The Past Only Because Reading Was Not A Common Accomplishment.... The World, You Must Remember, Is Only Just Becoming Literate. As Reading Becomes More And More Habitual And Widespread, An Ever-increasing Number Of People Will Discover That Books Will Give Them All The Pleasures Of Social Life And None Of Its Intolerable Tedium.

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.

To Associate With Other Like-minded People In Small, Purposeful Groups Is For The Great Majority Of Men And Women A Source Of Profound Psychological Satisfaction. Exclusiveness Will Add To The Pleasure Of Being Several, But At One; And Secrecy Will Intensify It Almost To Ecstasy.

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

The Spiritual Journey Does Not Consist Of Arriving At A New Destination Where A Person Gains What He Did Not Have, Or Becomes What He Is Not. It Consists In The Dissipation Of One's Own Ignorance Concerning Oneself And Life, And The Gradual Growth Of That Understanding Which Begins The Spiritual Awakening. The Finding Of God Is A Coming To One?s Self.

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.

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.

And So, Resisting The Temptation To Wallow In Artistic Remorse, I Prefer To Leave Both Well And Ill Alone And To Think About Something Else

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 Creation By Word-power Of Something Out Of Nothing--what Is That But Magic? And, May I Add, What Is That But Literature?

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

Why Do You Love The Woman You're In Love With? Because She Is. And That, After All, Is God's Own Definition Of Himself; I Am That I Am. The Girl Is Who She Is. Some Of Her Isness Spills Over And Impregnates The Entire Universe. Objects And Events Cease To Be Mere Representations Of Classes And Become Their Own Uniqueness; Cease To Be Illustrations Of Verbal Abstractions And Become Fully Concrete. Then You Stop Being In Love, And The Universe Collapses, With An Almost Audible Squeak Of Derision, Into Its Normal Insignificance.

Armaments, Universal Debt, And Planned Obsolescence - Those Are The Three Pillars Of Western Prosperity. If War, Waste, And Moneylenders Were Abolished, You'd Collapse. And While You People Are Overconsuming The Rest Of The World Sinks More And More Deeply Into Chronic Disaster.

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.

Children Are Nowhere Taught, In Any Systematic Way, To Distinguish True From False, Or Meaningful From Meaningless, Statements. Why Is This So? Because Their Elders, Even In The Democratic Countries, Do Not Want Them To Be Given This Kind Of Education.

Sunsets And Death; Death And Therefore Kisses, Kisses And Consequently Birth And Then Death For Yet Another Generation Of Sunset Watchers.

Official Dignity Tends To Increase In Inverse Ratio To The Importance Of The Country In Which The Office Is Held.

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.

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

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.

God Isn't The Son Of Memory; He's The Son Of Immediate Experience. You Can't Worship A Spirit In Spirit, Unless You Do It Now. Wallowing In The Past May Be Good Literature. As Wisdom, It's Hopeless. Time Regained Is Paradise Lost, And Time Lost Is Paradise Regained. Let The Dead Bury Their Dead. If You Want To Live At Every Moment As It Presents Itself, You've Got To Die To Every Other Moment.

The Horror No Less Than The Charm Of Real Life Consists Precisely In The Recurrent Actualization Of The Inconceivable

Most Ignorances Are Vincible, And In The Greater Number Of Cases Stupidity Is What The Buddha Pronounced It To Be, A Sin. For, Consciously, Or Subconsciously, It Is With Deliberation That We Do Not Know Or Fail To Understand-because Incomprehension Allows Us, With A Good Conscience, To Evade Unpleasant Obligations And Responsibilities, Because Ignorance Is The Best Excuse For Going On Doing What One Likes, But Ought Not, To Do.

A Love Of Nature Keeps No Factories Busy.

Never Give Children A Chance Of Imagining That Anything Exists In Isolation. Make It Plain From The Very Beginning That All Living Is Relationship. Show Them Relationships In The Woods, In The Fields, In The Ponds And Streams, In The Village And In The Country Around It. Rub It In.

Our Vanity Makes Us Exaggerate The Importance Of Human Life; The Individual Is Nothing; Nature Cares Only For The Species.

All Of Us Desire A Better State Of Society. But Society Cannot Become Better Before Two Great Tasks Are Performed.unless Peace Can Be Firmly Established And The Prevailing Obsession With Money And Power Profoundly Modified, There Is No Hope Of Any Desirable Change Being Made.

Most Kings And Priests Have Been Despotic, And All Religions Have Been Riddled With Superstition.

That All Men Are Equal Is A Proposition To Which, At Ordinary Times, No Sane Human Being Has Ever Given His Assent.

Universal Happiness Keeps The Wheels Steadily Turning, Truth And Beauty Can't.

Brave New World

The Worst Enemy Of Life, Freedom And The Common Decencies Is Total Anarchy; Their Second Worst Enemy Is Total Efficiency.

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

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

It Isn't A Matter Of Forgetting. What One Has To Learn Is How To Remember And Yet Be Free Of The Past.

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

Science In Itself Is Morally Neutral; It Becomes Good Or Evil According As It Is Applied.

Man Must Learn To Simplify, But Not To The Point Of Falsification.

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.

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.

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

These Are The Sort Of Things People Ought To Look At. Things Without Pretensions, Satisfied To Be Merely Themselves.

The Silent Bear No Witness Against Themselves.

To Aspire To Be Superhuman Is A Most Discreditable Admission That You Lack The Guts, The Wit, The Moderating Judgment To Be Successfully And Consummately Human.

Jehovah, Allah, The Trinity, Jesus, Buddha, Are Names For A Great Variety Of Human Virtues, Human Mystical Experiences, Human Remorses, Human Compensatory Fantasies, Human Terrors, Human Cruelties. If All Men Were Alike, All The World Would Worship The Same God.

The History Of Any Nation Follows An Undulatory Course. In The Trough Of The Wave We Find More Or Less Complete Anarchy; But The Crest Is Not More Or Less Complete Utopia, But Only, At Best, A Tolerably Humane, Partially Free And Fairly Just Society That Invariably Carries Within Itself The Seeds Of Its Own Decadence.

The Whole Story Of The Universe Is Implicit In Any Part Of It. The Meditative Eye Can Look Through Any Single Object And See, As Through A Window, The Entire Cosmos. Make The Smell Of Roast Duck In An Old Kitchen Diaphanous And You Will Have A Glimpse Of Everything, From The Spiral Nebulae To Mozart's Music And The Stigmata Of St. Francis Of Assisi. The Artistic Problem Is To Produce Diaphanousness In Spots, Selecting The Spots So As To Reveal Only The Most Humanly Significant Of Distant Vistas Behind The Near Familiar Object.

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.

Dinted Dimpled Wimpled-his Mind Wandered Down Echoing Corridors Of Assonance And Alliteration Ever Further And Further From The Point. He Was Enamoured With The Beauty Of Words.

Liberty, As We All Know, Cannot Flourish In A Country That Is Permanently On A War Footing, Or Even A Near War Footing. Permanent Crisis Justifies Permanent Control Of Everybody And Everything By The Agencies Of Central Government.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

A Child-like Man Is Not A Man Whose Development Has Been Arrested; On The Contrary, He Is A Man Who Has Given Himself A Chance Of Continuing To Develop Long After Most Adults Have Muffled Themselves In The Cocoon Of Middle-aged Habit And Convention.

The Poet Is Born With The Capacity Of Arranging Words In Such A Way That Something Of The Quality Of The Graces And Inspirations He Has Received Can Make Itself Felt To Other Human Beings In The White Spaces, So To Speak, Between The Lines Of His Verse. This Is A Great And Precious Gift; But If The Poet Remains Content With His Gift, If He Persists In Worshipping The Beauty In Art And Nature Without Going On To Make Himself Capable, Through Selflessness, Of Apprehending Beauty As It Is In The Divine Ground, Then He Is Only An Idolater.

Unlike The Masses, Intellectuals Have A Taste For Rationality And An Interest In Facts.

De Sade Is The One Completely Consistent And Thoroughgoing Revolutionary Of History.

"our Kingdom Go" Is The Necessary And Unavoidable Corollary Of 'thy Kingdom Come.' For The More There Is Self, The Less There Is Of God. The Divine Eternal Fulness Of Life Can Be Gained Only By Those Who Have Deliberately Lost The Partial, Separative Life Of Craving And Self-interest, Of Egocentric Thinking, Feeling, Wishing, And Acting.

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.

I Think We Have To Prepare The Mind In One Way Or Another To Accept The Great Uprush Or Downrush, Whichever You Like To Call It, Of The Greater Non-self.

Her Cheeks Were Flushed. She Caught Hold Of The Savage's Arm And Pressed It, Limp, Against Her Side. He Looked Down At Her For A Moment, Pale, Pained, Desiring, And Ashamed Of His Desire. He Was Not Worthy, Not... Their Eyes For A Moment Met. What Treasures Hers Promised! A Queen's Ransom Of Temperament. Hastily He Looked Away, Disengaged His Imprisoned Arm. He Was Obscurely Terrified Lest She Should Cease To Be Something He Could Feel Himself Unworthy Of.

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.

People Travel For The Same Reason As They Collect Works Of Art: Because The Best People Do It.

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.

It Is Delightful To Read On The Spot The Impressions And Opinions Of Tourists Who Visited A Hundred Years Ago, In The Vehicles And With The Aesthetic Prejudices Of The Period, The Places Which You Are Visiting Now. The Voyage Ceases To Be A Mere Tour Through Space; You Travel Through Time And Thought As Well.

The Mockery Made Him Feel An Outsider; And Feeling An Outsider He Behaved Like One, Which Increased The Prejudice Against Him And Intensified The Contempt And Hostility Aroused By His Physical Defects. Which In Turn Increased His Sense Of Being Alien And Alone. A Chronic Fear Of Being Slighted Made Him Avoid His Equals, Made Him Stand, Where His Inferiors Were Concerned, Self-consciously On His Dignity.

The Rush To Books And Universities Is Like The Rush To The Public House. People Want To Drown Their Realization Of The Difficulties Of Living Properly In This Grotesque Contemporary World, They Want To Forget Their Own Deplorable Inefficiency As Artists In Life.

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.

But The Nature Of The Universe Is Such That Ends Can Never Justify Means. On The Contrary, The Means Always Determine The End.

Procrustes In Modern Dress, The Nuclear Scientist Will Prepare The Bed On Which Mankind Must Lie; And If Mankind Doesn’t Fit—well, That Will Be Just Too Bad For Mankind. There Will Have To Be Some Stretching And A Bit Of Amputation—the Same Sort Of Stretching And Amputations As Have Been Going On Ever Since Applied Science Really Got Going Into Its Stride, Only This Time They Will Be A Good Deal More Drastic Than In The Past. These Far From Painless Operations Will Be Directed By Highly Centralized Totalitarian Governments.

Teaching Is The Last Refuge Of Feeble Minds With A Classical Education.

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.

Happiness Is Like Coke — Something You Get As A By-product In The Process Of Making Something Else.

The Brotherhood Of Men Does Not Imply Their Equality. Families Have Their Fools And Their Men Of Genius, Their Black Sheep And Their Saints, Their Worldly Successes And Their Worldly Failures. A Man Should Treat His Brothers Lovingly And With Justice, According To The Deserts Of Each. But The Deserts Of Every Brother Are Not The Same.

The Condition Of Being Forgiven Is Self-abandonment. The Proud Man Prefers Self-reproach, However Painful --because The Reproached Self Isn't Abandoned; It Remains Intact.

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

Unless We Choose To Decentralize And To Use Applied Science, Not As The End To Which Human Beings Are To Be Made The Means, But As The Means To Producing A Race Of Free Individuals, We Have Only Two Alternatives To Choose From: Either A Number Of National

Hell Is The Incapacity To Be Other Than The Creature One Finds Oneself Ordinarily Behaving As.

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.

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

To Write Fiction, One Needs A Whole Series Of Inspirations About People In An Actual Environment, And Then A Whole Lot Of Work On The Basis Of Those Inspirations.

I'm Afraid Of Losing My Obscurity. Genuineness Only Thrives In The Dark. Like Celery.

If Only People Would Realize That Moral Principles Are Like Measles.... They Have To Be Caught. And Only The People Who've Got Them Can Pass On The Contagion.

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.

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.

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.

Religion Is Always A Patron Of The Arts, But Its Taste Is By No Means Impeccable.

Given A Fair Chance, Human Beings Can Govern Themselves, And Govern Themselves Better

Medical Science Has Made Such Tremendous Progress That There Is Hardly A Healthy Human Left.

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

Meaninglessness

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.

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.

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

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

In The World Of Ideas Everything Was Clear; In Life All Was Obscure, Embroiled.

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.

Addiction Is An Increasing Desire For An Act That Gives Less And Less Satisfaction

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.

This Growing Poverty In The Midst Of Growing Population Constitutes A Permanent Menace To Peace. And Not Only To Peace, But Also To Democratic Institutions And Personal Liberty For Overpopulation Is Not Compatible With Freedom.

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.

Ironically Enough, The Only People Who Can Hold Up Indefinitely Under The Stress Of Modern War Are Psychotics. Individual Insanity Is Immune To The Consequences Of Collective Insanity.

The Fact That People Are Shocked Is The Best Proof That They Need Shocking.

People Intoxicate Themselves With Work So They Won't See How They Really Are.

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.

Brave New World

Alpha Children Wear Grey. They Work Much Harder Than We Do, Because They're So Frightfully Clever. I'm Awfully Glad I'm A Beta, Because I Don't Work So Hard. And Then We Are Much Better Than The Gammas And Deltas. Gammas Are Stupid. They All Wear Green, And Delta Children Wear Khaki. Oh No, I Don't Want To Play With Delta Children. And Epsilons Are Still Worse. They're Too Stupid To Be Able To Read Or Write. Besides They Wear Black, Which Is Such A Beastly Color. I'm So Glad I'm A Beta.

Chastity - The Most Unnatural Of All The Sexual Perversions.

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.

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.

The Only Consistent People Are The Dead

I Dread The Inevitable Acceleration Of American World Domination Which Will Be The Result Of It All...europe Will No Longer Be Europe.

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.

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

Indifference To All The Refinements Of Life--it's Really Shocking. Just Calvinism, That's All. Calvinism Without The Excuse Of Calvin's Theology.

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.

Since Mozart's Day Composers Have Learned The Art Of Making Music Throatily And Palpitatingly Sexual.

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?

Fortunately, However, Birds Don't Understand Pep Talks. Not Even St. Francis'. Just Imagine, He Went On, Preaching Sermons To Perfectly Good Thrushes And Goldfinches And Chiff-chaffs! What Presumption! Why Couldn't He Have Kept His Mouth Shut And Let The Birds Preach To Him?

The Survival Of Democracy Depends On The Ability Of Large Numbers Of People To Make Realistic Choices In The Light Of Adequate Information.

All Urbanization, Pushed Beyond A Certain Point, Automatically Becomes Suburbanization.... Every Great City Is Just A Collection Of Suburbs. Its Inhabitantsdo Not Live In Their City; They Merely Inhabit It.

Like Every Man Of Sense And Good Feeling, I Abominate Work.

Happiness Is Never Grand.

Thanks To Words, We Have Been Able To Rise Above The Brutes; And Thanks To Words, We Have Often Sunk To The Level Of The Demons.

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

Every Ceiling Reached Becomes A Floor.

For At Least Two Thirds Of Our Miseries Spring From Human Stupidity, Human Malice And Those Great Motivators And Justifiers Of Malice And Stupidity, Idealism, Dogmatism And Proselytizing Zeal On Behalf Of Religious Or Political Idols

The Leech's Kiss, The Squid's Embrace, The Prurient Ape's Defiling Touch: And Do You Like The Human Race? No, Not Much.

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

Doors Of Perception

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.

...it Is Not What One Has Experienced But What One Does With What One Has Experienced That Matters.

When The Sun Rises, It Rises For Everyone.

Defined In Psychological Terms, A Fanatic Is A Man Who Consciously Over-compensates A Secret Doubt.

The Course Of Every Intellectual, If He Pursues His Journey Long And Unflinchingly Enough, Ends In The Obvious, From Which The Non-intellectuals Have Never Stirred.

Abused As We Abuse It At Present, Dramatic Art Is In No Sense Cathartic; It Is Merely A Form Of Emotional Masturbation.

But I Don't Want Comfort. I Want God, I Want Poetry, I Want Real Danger, I Want Freedom, I Want Goodness. I Want Sin.

Brave New World

If One Is Not Oneself A Sage Or Saint, The Best Thing One Can Do Is To Study The Words Of Those Who Were.

Ending Is Better Than Mending.

For The Born Traveller, Travelling Is A Besetting Vice. Like Other Vices, It Is Imperious, Demanding Its Victim's Time, Money, Energy And The Sacrifice Of Comfort.

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

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

Industrial Man—a Sentient Reciprocating Engine Having A Fluctuating Output, Coupled To An Iron Wheel Revolving With Uniform Velocity. And Then We Wonder Why This Should Be The Golden Age Of Revolution And Mental Derangement.

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.

Liberties Are Not Given, They Are Taken.

Man Is Unique In Organizing The Mass Murder Of His Own Species.

So Long As Men Worship The Caesars And Napoleons, Caesars And Napoleons Will Duly Arise And Make Them Miserable.

Experience Is Not What Happens To You; It's What You Do With What Happens To You.

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

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.

Experience Is Not What Happens To A Man; It Is What A Man Does With What Happens To Him. It Is A Gift For Dealing With The Accidents Of Existence, Not The Accidents Themselves.

Who Lives Longer? The Man Who Takes Heroin For Two Years And Dies, Or A Man Who Lives On Roast Beef, Water And Potatoes 'till 95? One Passes His 24 Months In Eternity. All The Years Of The Beefeater Are Lived Only In Time.

The Instinct Of Acquisitiveness Has More Perverts, I Believe, Than The Instinct Of Sex. At Any Rate, People Seem To Me Odder About Money Than About Even Their Amours.

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

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.

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 Most Of Us Remain Ignorant Of Ourselves, It Is Because Self-knowledge Is Painful And We Prefer The Pleasures Of Illusion.

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

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

Did You Eat Something That Didn't Agree With You?" Asked Bernard. The Savage Nodded "i Ate Civilization.

Art And Religion, Carnivals And Saturnalia, Dancing And Listening To Oratory - All These Have Served, In H. G. Wells's Phrase, As Doors In The Wall.

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.

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.

The Most Intractable Of Our Experiences Is The Experience Of Time-the Intuition Of Duration, Combined With The Thought Of Perpetual Perishing.

God In The Safe And Ford On The Shelves.

Brave New World

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.

To The Exponents Of The Perennial Philosophy, The Question Whether Progress Is Inevitable Or Even Real Is Not A Matter Of Primary Importance. For Them, The Important Thing Is That Individual Men And Women Should Come To The Unitive Knowledge Of The Divine Ground, And What Interests Them In Regard To The Social Environment Is Not Its Progressiveness Or Non-progressiveness (whatever Those Terms May Mean), But The Degree To Which It Helps Or Hinders Individuals In The Their Advance Towards Man's Final End.

Most Human Beings Have An Almost Infinite Capacity For Taking Things For Granted.

One Of The Great Triumphs Of The Nineteenth Century Was To Limit The Connotation Of The Word "immoral" In Such A Way That, For Practical Purposes, Only Those Were Immoral Who Drank Too Much Or Made Too Copious Love. Those Who Indulged In Any Or All Of The Other Deadly Sins Could Look Down In Righteous Indignation On The Lascivious And The Gluttonous.... In The Name Of All Lechers And Boozers I Most Solemnly Protest Against The Invidious Distinction Made To Our Prejudice.

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.

One Right-thinking Man Thinks Like All Other Right-thinking Men Of His Time That Is To Say, In Most Cases, Like Some Wrong-thinking Man Of Another Time.

Man Is An Intelligence In Servitude To His Organs.

In Actual Life A Downward Movement May Sometimes Be Made The Beginning Of An Ascent.

... 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.

Modern Man No Longer Regards Nature As In Any Sense Divine And Feels Perfectly Free To Behave Toward Her As An Overweening Conqueror And Tyrant.

Medical Science Is Making Such Remarkable Progress That Soon None Of Us Will Be Well.

Medical Science

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.

For The First Time In The History Of The World, Buddhism Proclaimed A Salvation Which Each Individual Could Gain From Him Or Herself, In This World, During This Life, Without Any Least Reference To God, Or To Gods Either Great Or Small.

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.

My Father Considered A Walk Among The Mountains As The Equivalent Of Churchgoing.

Experience Is Not A Matter Of Having Actually Swum The Hellespont, Or Danced With The Dervishes, Or Slept In A Doss-house. It Is A Matter Of Sensibility And Intuition, Of Seeing, And Hearing The Significant Thing, Of Paying Attention At The Right Moments, Of Understanding And Coordinating. Experience Is Not What Happens To A Man; It Is What A Man Does With What Happens To Him.

Significant Things

Marble, I Perceive, Covers A Multitude Of Sins.

What I May Call The Messages Of Brave New World, But It Is Possible To Make People Contented With Their Servitude. I Think This Can Be Done. I Think It Has Been Done In The Past. I Think It Could Be Done Even More Effectively Now Because You Can Provide Them With Bread And Circuses And You Can Provide Them With Endless Amounts Of Distractions And Propaganda.

Brave New World

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

Happiness Is A Hard Master, Particularly Other People's Happiness.

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

I Don't Think There Is Any Incompatibility Between Science And Mysticism . . . Immanent Religion Is The Only Form Of Religion In Which There Is No Conflict At All, That I Can See, Between Science And Religion.

Blood Of The World, Time Staunchless Flows; The Wound Is Mortal And Is Mine.

I Ate Civilization. It Poisoned Me; I Was Defiled. And Then," He Added In A Lower Tone, "i Ate My Own Wickedness.

There Are Few Who Would Not Rather Be Taken In Adultery Than In Provocation.

Men Make Use Of Their Illnesses At Least As Much As They Are Made Use Of By Them.

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

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 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

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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