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Words Are Magical In The Way They Affect The Minds Of Those Who Use Them.
-Aldous Huxley
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Words Are Magical In

Aldous Huxley
...
Words Are Magical In The Way They Affect The Minds Of Those Who Use Them.

Understanding the Quote: "words are magical in the way they affect the minds of those..."

This quote by Aldous Huxley reflects deeply on the theme of mind. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Mind, Use, Way, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Aldous Huxley interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley is celebrated for insightful thoughts on mind and use. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Mind
Use
Way
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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.
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The Advertisement Is One Of The Most Interesting And Difficult Of Modern Literary Forms.
Interesting
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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.
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What The Rest Of Us See Only Under The Influence Of Mescalin, The Artist Is Congenitally Equipped To See All The Time.
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And No Wonder; For The New Technique Of "subliminal Projection," As It Was Called, Was Intimately Associated With Mass Entertainment, And In The Life Of Civilized Human Beings Massed Entertainment Now Plays A Part Comparable To That Played In The Middle Ages Be Religion.
Play
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Men Make Use Of Their Illnesses At Least As Much As They Are Made Use Of By Them.
Health
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Did You Ever Feel, As Though You Had Something Inside You That Was Only Waiting For You To Give It A Chance To Come Out? Some Sort Of Extra Power That You Aren't Using - You Know, Like All The Water That Goes Down The Falls Instead Of Through The Turbines?
Fall
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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.
Cheating
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Reality, No Matter How Utopian, Seems To Be Something People Need To Frequently Take A Holiday From.
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Try Lsd, 100mg Intramuscular... I Thought So.
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Our Vanity Makes Us Exaggerate The Importance Of Human Life; The Individual Is Nothing; Nature Cares Only For The Species.
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They're Old; They're About God Hundreds Of Years Ago. Not About God Now" "but God Doesn't Change" "men Do Though
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I Think That Fiction And, As I Say, History And Biography Are Immensely Important, Not Only For Their Own Sake, Because They Provide A Picture Of Life Now And Of Life In The Past, But Also As Vehicles For The Expression Of General Philosophic Ideas, Religious Ideas, Social Ideas.
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Something That Had Been A Single Cell, A Cluster Of Cells, A Little Sac Of Tissue, A Kind Of Worm, A Potential Fish With Gills, Stirred In Her Womb And Would One Day Become A Man--a Grown Man, Suffering And Enjoying, Loving And Hating, Thinking, Remembering, Imagining. And What Had Been A Blob Of Jelly Within Her Body Would Invent A God And Worship; What Had Been A Kind Of Fish Would Create, And, Having Created, Would Become The Battleground Of Disputing Good And Evil; What Had Blindly Lived In Her As A Parasitic Worm Would Look At The Stars, Would Listen To Music, Would Read Poetry.
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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.
Powerful
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Slowly, Very Slowly, Like Two Unhurried Compass Needles, The Feet Turned Towards The Right; North, North-east, East, South-east, South, South-south-west; Then Paused, And After A Few Seconds, Turned As Unhurriedly Back Towards The Left. South-south-west, South, South-east, East.
Two
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The Vast Majority Of Human Beings Are Not Interested In Reason Or Satisfied With What It Teaches.
Majority
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The Proper Study Of Mankind Is Books.
Reading
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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.
Country
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As Late As The Seventeenth Century, Monarchs Owned So Little Furniture That They Had To Travel From Palace To Palace With Wagon-loads Of Plate And Bedspreads, Of Carpets And Tapestries.
Littles
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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.
Children
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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.
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The Amelioration Of The World Cannot Be Achieved By Sacrifices In Moments Of Crisis; It Depends On The Efforts Made And Constantly Repeated During The Humdrum, Uninspiring Periods, Which Separate One Crisis From Another, And Of Which Normal Lives Mainly Consist.
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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.
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Silence Is As Full Of Potential Wisdom And Wit As The Unshown Marble Of Great Sculpture. The Silent Bear No Witness Against Themselves.
Wisdom
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Our Goal Is To Discover That We Have Always Been Where We Ought To Be
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Beware Of Being Too Rational. In The Country Of The Insane, The Integrated Man Doesn't Become King. He Gets Lynched.
Country
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Never Have So Many Been Manipulated So Much By So Few.
If One Is Not Oneself A Sage Or Saint, The Best Thing One Can Do Is To Study The Words Of Those Who Were.
Learning
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Successfully (whatever That May Mean) Or Unsuccessfully, We All Overact The Part Of Our Favorite Character In Fiction.
Character
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All That Is Needed Is Money And A Candidate Who Can Be Coached To Look Sincere. Political Principles And Plans For Specific Action Have Come To Lose Most Of Their Importance. The Personality Of The Candidate, The Way He Is Projected By The Advertising Experts, Are The Things That Really Matter.
Personality
Political
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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.
Country
Children
Giving
Habit Converts Luxurious Enjoyments Into Dull And Daily Necessities.
Luxury
Literature
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Experience Is Not What Happens To You; It's What You Do With What Happens To You.
Inspirational
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We Are Not Our Own Any More Than What We Possess Is Our Own. We Did Not Make Ourselves, We Cannot Be Supreme Over Ourselves. We Are Not Our Own Masters.
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From The Internal Reality, By Which I Means The Totality Of Psychological Experiences, It [science] Actually Separates Us. Art, For Example, Deals With Many More Aspects Of This Internal Reality Than Does Science, Which Confines Itself Deliberately And By Convention To The Study Of One Very Limited Class Of Experiences The Experiences Of Sense.
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So The Journey Is Over And I Am Back Again Where I Started, Richer By Much Experience And Poorer By Many Unexploded Certainties. For Convictions And Certainties Are Too Often The Concomitants Of Ignorance. Those Who Like To Feel They Are Always Right And Who Attached A High Importance To Their Own Opinions Should Stay At Home. When One Is Traveling, Convictions Are Mislaid As Easily As Spectacles; But Unlike Spectacles, They Are Not Easily Replaced.
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...two Thirds Of All Sorrow Is Homemade And, So Far As The Universe Is Concerned, Unnecessary.
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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.
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Several Excuses Are Always Less Convincing Than One.
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There Are Many Kinds Of Gods. Therefore There Are Many Kinds Of Men.
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Words Form The Thread On Which We String Our Experiences.
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In Religion All Words Are Dirty Words. Anybody Who Gets Eloquent About Buddha, Or God, Or Christ, Ought To Have His Mouth Washed Out With Carbolic Soap.
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The Sum Of Evil, Pascal Remarked, Would Be Much Diminished If Men Could Only Learn To Sit Quietly In Their Rooms.
Men
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People Believe In God Because They've Been Conditioned To Believe In God.
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[i Am Not] The Captain Of My Soul; I Am Only Its Noisiest Passenger.
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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.
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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.
Believe
Mean
Profound
If Human Beings Were Shown What They're Really Like, They'd Either Kill One Another As Vermin, Or Hang Themselves.
Insanity
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The People Who Kill And Torture And Tell Lies In The Name Of Their Sacred Causes, These Are Never The Publicans And The Sinners. No, They're The Virtuous, Respectable Men, Who Have The Finest Feelings, The Best Brains, The Noblest Ideals.
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Names
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.
Girl
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Real
Since Mozart's Day Composers Have Learned The Art Of Making Music Throatily And Palpitatingly Sexual.
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Only Times And Places, Only Names And Ghosts.
Names
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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.
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That’s What The Human Brain Is There For—to Turn The Chaos Of Given Experience Into A Set Of Manageable Symbols. Sometimes The Symbols Correspond Fairly Closely To Some Of The Aspects Of The External Reality Behind Our Experience; Then You Have Science And Common Sense. Sometimes, On The Contrary, The Symbols Have Almost No Connection With External Reality; Then You Have Paranoia And Delirium. More Often There’s A Mixture, Part Realistic And Part Fantastic; That’s Religion.
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No Holiday Is Ever Anything But A Disappointment.
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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.
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The Present Moment Is The Only Aperture Through Which The Soul Can Pass Out Of Time Into Eternity, Through Which Grace Can Pass Out Of Eternity Into The Soul, And Through Which Love Can Pass From One Soul In Time To Another Soul In Time.
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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.
Men
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Hug Me Till You Drug Me, Honey; Kiss Me Till I'm In A Coma.
Kissing
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Drug
By Comparison With A Night-club, Churches Are Positively Gay.
Gay
Night
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We Live Together, We Act On, And React To One Another; But Always, And In All Circumstances, We Are By Ourselves.
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But The Quiet Grows And Grows. Beautifully And Unbearably.
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But Then Every Man Is Ludicrous If You Look At Him From Outside, Without Taking Into Account What’s Going On In His Heart And Mind.
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Most Vices Demand Considerable Self-sacrifices. There Is No Greater Mistake Than To Suppose That A Vicious Life Is A Life Of Uninterrupted Pleasure. It Is A Life Almost As Wearisome And Painful -- If Strenuously Led -- As Christian's In The Pilgrim's Progress.
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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.
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An Intellectual Is A Person Who's Found One Thing That's More Interesting Than Sex.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It Is A Bit Embarrassing To Have Been Concerned With The Human Problem All One's Life And Find At The End That One Has No More To Offer By Way Of Advice Than 'try To Be A Little Kinder.'
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Hell Is The Incapacity To Be Other Than The Creature One Finds Oneself Ordinarily Behaving As.
Hell
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Creatures
If One's Different, One's Bound To Be Lonely.
Lonely
Loneliness
Different
There Is No Bad Day That Can’t Be Overcome By Listening To A Barbershop Quartet. This Is Just Truth, Plain And Simple.
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Simple
Listening
Under The Present Dispensation, The Great Majority Of Factories Are Little Despotisms, Benevolent In Some Cases, Malevolent In Others. Even Where Benevolence Prevails, Passive Obedience Is Demanded By The Workers, Who Are Ruled By Overseers, Not Of Their Own Election, But Appointed From Above. In Theory They May Be The Subjects Of A Democratic State; But In Practice They Spend The Whole Of Their Working Lives As The Subjects Of A Petty Tyrant.
Practice
Tyrants
Majority
It Isn't A Matter Of Forgetting. What One Has To Learn Is How To Remember And Yet Be Free Of The Past.
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Matter
Remember
Isn't It Remarkable How Everyone Who Knew [d.h.] Lawrence Has Felt Compelled To Write About Him? Why, He's Had More Books Written About Him Than Any Writer Since Byron!
Book
Writing
Byron
One Believes Things Because One Has Been Conditioned To Believe Them.
Believe
Belief
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Plasticene And Self-expression Will Not Solve The Problems Of Education. Nor Will Technology And Vocational Guidance; Nor The Classics And The Hundred Best Books.
Education
Book
Technology
Only A Person With A Best Seller Mind Can Write Best Sellers.
Writing
Mind
Persons
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.
Religious
Men
Unique
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.
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Self
All Democracies Are Based On The Proposition That Power Is Very Dangerous And That It Is Extremely Important Not To Let Any One Person Or Small Group Have Too Much Power For Too Long A Time
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Democracy
Important
I'd Rather Be Myself," He Said. "myself And Nasty. Not Somebody Else, However Jolly.
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Said
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Technological Progress Has Merely Provided Us With More Efficient Means For Going Backwards.
Mean
Technology
Progress
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.
Passion
Feelings
Height
Liberties Are Not Given, They Are Taken.
Freedom
Taken
Liberty
Sons Have Always A Rebellious Wish To Be Disillusioned By That Which Charmed Their Fathers.
Fathers Day
Dad
Son
The Most Valuable Of All Education Is The Ability To Make Yourself Do The Thing You Have To Do, When It Has To Be Done, Whether You Like It Or Not.
Inspiring
Education
Procrastination
Speed, It Seems To Me, Provides The One Genuinely Modern Pleasure.
Speed
Modern
Pleasure
Happiness Is Never Grand.
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.
Blessed
Sleep
Blessing
To Make This Trivial World Sublime, Take Half A Gram Of Phanerothyme.
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Half
World
Man Is Unique In Organizing The Mass Murder Of His Own Species.
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Men
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?
Perfectly Good
Bird
Mouths
Every Man Who Knows How To Read Has It In His Power To Magnify Himself, To Multiply The Ways In Which He Exists, To Make His Life Full, Significant And Interesting.
Life
Education
Philosophy
If Humans Were In Fact The Members Of A Truly Social Species, And If Their Individual Differences Were Trifling And Could Be Completely Ironed Out By Appropriate Conditioning, Then, Obviously, There Would Be No Need For Liberty And The State Would Be Justified In Persecuting The Heretics Who Demanded It.
Individual Differences
Liberty
Would Be
The Lunatic Fringe Is More Like A Spanish Shawl, Where The Fringe Makes Up The Entire Garment.
Life
Fringe
Garments
All The Advantages Of Christianity And Alcohol; None Of Their Defects.
Brave New World
Alcohol
Soma
Did You Eat Something That Didn't Agree With You?" Asked Bernard. The Savage Nodded "i Ate Civilization.
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Savages
Agree
When The Individual Feels, The Community Reels.
Brave New World
Community
Individual
Knowledge Is Porportionate To Being... You Know In Virtue Of What You Are.
Knowledge
Virtue
Knows
It Is Possible To Argue That The Really Influential Book Is Not That Which Converts Ten Millions Of Casual Readers, But Rather That Which Converts The Very Few Who, At Any Given Moment, Succeed In Seizing Power. Marx And Sorel Have Been Influential In The Modern World, Not So Much Because They Were Best-sellers (sorel In Particular Was Not At All A Widely Read Author), But Because Among Their Few Readers Were Two Men, Called Respectively Lenin And Mussolini.
Book
Men
Two
Intellectuals ... Regard Over-simplification As The Original Sin Of The Mind And Have No Use For The Slogans, The Unqualified Assertions And Sweeping Generalizations.
Mind
Use
Unqualified
I Am Ignorant And Impotent And Yet, Somehow Or Other, Here I Am, Unhappy, No Doubt, Profoundly Dissatisfied ... In Spite Of Everything I Survive.
Here I Am
Doubt
Ignorant
But Every One Belongs To Every One Else
Brave New World
Brave New World John
Brave New World Technology
Proverbs Are Always Platitudes Until You Have Personally Experienced The Truth Of Them.
Truth
Literature
Platitudes
Feasts Must Be Solemn And Rare, Or Else They Cease To Be Feasts.
Solemn
Cease
The Only Consistent People Are The Dead
People
Consistent
It Takes A Certain Amount Of Intelligence And Imagination To Realize The Extraordinary Queerness And Mysteriousness Of The World In Which We Live.
Imagination
World
Realizing
People Travel For The Same Reason As They Collect Works Of Art: Because The Best People Do It.
Art
People
Reason
The Horror No Less Than The Charm Of Real Life Consists Precisely In The Recurrent Actualization Of The Inconceivable
Real
Horror
Charm
Everyone Who Wants To Do Good To The Human Race Always Ends In Universal Bullying.
Life
Bullying
Race
Dedicated To All Those Who Say: "i Don't Have Time For Analytics" Or "i Don't Understand Analytics".
Dedicated
Analytics
The Natural Rhythm Of Human Life Is Routine Punctuated By Orgies.
Life
Routine
Natural
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.
Judgment
Wit
Admission
The Trouble With Fiction," Said John Rivers, "is That It Makes Too Much Sense. Reality Never Makes Sense.
Reality
Rivers
Fiction
Thought Of The Incomprehensible Sequence Of Changes And Chances That Make Up A Life, All The Beauties And Horrors And Absurdities Whose Conjunctions Create The Uninterpretable And Yet Divinely Significant Pattern Of Human Destiny.
Destiny
Patterns
Chance
If It Were Not For The Intellectual Snobs Who Pay - In Solid Cash - The Arts Would Perish With Their Starving Practitioners. Let Us Thank Heaven For Hypocrisy.
Art
Hypocrite
Hypocrisy
Experience Teaches Only The Teachable.
Inspirational
Teaching
Experience
Every Idol, However Exalted, Turns Out, In The Long Run, To Be A Moloch, Hungry For Human Sacrifice.
Running
Sacrifice
Idols
Cant Is Always Rather Nauseating; But Before We Condemn Political Hypocrisy, Let Us Remember That It Is The Tribute Paid By Men Of Leather To Men Of God, And That The Acting Of The Part Of Someone Better Than Oneself May Actually Commit One To A Course Of Behavior Perceptibly Less Evil Than What Would Be Normal And Natural In An Avowed Cynic.
Men
Hypocrisy
Evil
Each Person Is At Each Moment Capable Of Remembering All That Has Ever Happened To Him And Of Perceiving Everything That Is Happening Everywhere In The Universe.
Remember
Moments
Doors Of Perception
There Is No Substitute For Talent. Industry And All Its Virtues Are Of No Avail.
Talent
Virtue
Substitutes
The Indispensible Is Not Necessarily The Desirable.
Desirable
Folly Is Often More Cruel In The Consequences Than Malice Can Be In The Intent.
Unhappiness
Malice
Folly
The Quality Of Moral Behavior Varies In Inverse Ratio To The Number Of Human Beings Involved.
Moral Behavior
Numbers
Quality
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.
Wise
Wisdom
Science
... One Reads, Above All, To Prevent Oneself Thinking.
Thinking
Oneself
Man Has An Almost Infinite Capacity For Taking Things And People For Granted And Thereby Missing Out On The Pleasure Of Being Grateful That Things Aren't Worse And Of Praising And Thereby Lifting The Spirits Of Others.
Gratitude
Grateful
Men
Unlike The Masses, Intellectuals Have A Taste For Rationality And An Interest In Facts.
Taste
Facts
Mass
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.
Love
Emotional
Tears
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.
Fate
Political
Helping
Where Beauty Is Worshipped For Beauty's Sake As A Goddess, Independent Of And Superior To Morality And Philosophy, The Most Horrible Putrefaction Is Apt To Set In. The Lives Of The Aesthetes Are The Far From Edifying Commentary On The Religion Of Beauty.
Life
Beauty
God
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.
Letting Go
Lying
Fall
Ending Is Better Than Mending.
Mending
Nothing — The Only Perfection, The Only Absolute. Infinite And Eternal Nothing.
Perfection
Infinite
Eternal
I'm Pretty Good At Inventing Phrases - You Know, The Sort Of Words That Suddenly Make You Jump, Almost As Though You'd Sat On A Pin, They Seem So New And Exciting Even Though They're About Something Hypnopaedically* Obvious. But That Doesn't Seem Enough. It's Not Enough For The Phrases To Be Good; What You Make With Them Ought To Be Good Too.
Sleep
Phrases
Enough
Compared With That Of Taoists And Far Eastern Buddhists, The Christian Attitude Toward Nature Has Been Curiously Insensitive And Often Downright Domineering And Violent. Taking Their Cue From An Unfortunate Remark In Genesis, Catholic Moralists Have Regarded Animals As Mere Things Which Men Do Right To Regard For Their Own Ends. . . .
Christian
Buddhist
Attitude
Life's So Ordinary That Literature Has To Deal With The Exceptional. Exceptional Talent, Power, Social Position, Wealth.... Dramabegins Where There's Freedom Of Choice. And Freedom Of Choice Begins When Social Or Psychological Conditions Are Exceptional. That's Why The Inhabitants Of Imaginative Literature Have Always Been Recruited From The Pages Of Who's Who.
Art
Reality
Choices
The More Powerful And Original A Mind, The More It Will Incline Towards The Religion Of Solitude.
Lonely
Powerful
Loneliness
Consider The Problem Of Over-population. Rapidly Mounting Human Numbers Are Pressing Ever More Heavily On Natural Resources. What Is To Be Done?... The Annual Increase Of Numbers Should Be Reduced. But How? We Are Given Two Choices -- Famine, Pestilence And War On The One Hand, Birth Control On The Other. Most Of Us Choose Birth Control.
War
Hands
Two
Bondage Is The Life Of Personality, And For Bondage The Personal Self Will Fight With Tireless Resourcefulness And The Most Stubborn Cunning.
Character
Fighting
Self
I Have Spoken So Far Only Of The Blissful Visionary Experience? But Visionary Experience Is Not Always Blissful. It's Sometimes Terrible. There Is Hell As Well As Heaven.
Heaven
Experience
Visionaries
No Social Stability Without Individual Stability.
Brave New World
Individual
Social
The Social Body Persists Although The Component Cells May Change.
Cells
Body
May
Can We Unite Against Ourselves For Our Own Higher Interest?
Hero
Heroic
Interest
At Their First Appearance Innovators Have Always Been Derided As Fools And Mad Men.
Men
Mad
Fool
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.
Love
Soul
Principles
I Know The Outer World As Well As You Do, And I Judge It. You Know Nothing Of My Inner World, And Yet You Presume To Judge That World.
Judging
World
Wells
Such Prosperity As We Have Known It Up To The Present Is The Consequence Of Rapidly Spending The Planet's Irreplaceable Capital.
Nature
Environment
Prosperity
Europe Is So Well Gardened That It Resembles A Work Of Art, A Scientific Theory, A Neat Metaphysical System. Man Has Re-created Europe In His Own Image.
Art
Men
Europe
There Are Few Who Would Not Rather Be Taken In Adultery Than In Provocation.
Marriage
Taken
Adultery
Round Pegs In Square Holes Tend To Have Dangerous Thoughts About The Social System And Tend To Infect Others With Their Discontents.
Squares
Social
Holes
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.
Stupid
Class
May
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.
Country
Dope
People
Everyone Thinks This Way At Some Point. The Important Thing Is To Power Through And Get To Learning. If You Really Don't Have The Time Let Me Handle Your Analytics.
Thinking
Important
Way
Words Are Magical In The Way They Affect The Minds Of Those Who Use Them.
Mind
Use
Way
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.
Love
Mother
Children
All That Happens Means Something; Nothing You Do Is Ever Insignificant.
Mean
Happens
Insignificant
Sleep Is The Most Blessed And Blessing Of All Natural Graces.
Blessed
Sleep
Blessing
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.
Progress
Industrialization
Assets
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.
Cat
Thinking
Symphony
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.
Taken
Nwo
People
Almost All Of Us Long For Peace And Freedom; But Very Few Of Us Have Much Enthusiasm For The Thoughts, Feelings, And Actions That Make For Peace And Freedom.
Peace
Long
Hypocrisy
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.
Mind
Assonance
Alliteration
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.
Love
Children
Philosophy
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.
Country
Names
Long
Grace Is Always Sufficient, Provided We Are Ready To Cooperate With It.
Grace
Doing Your Best
Ready
I Dread The Inevitable Acceleration Of American World Domination Which Will Be The Result Of It All...europe Will No Longer Be Europe.
Europe
World
Results
Science Has Explained Nothing; The More We Know The More Fantastic The World Becomes And The Profounder The Surrounding Darkness.
Knowledge
Science
Darkness
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.
Country
War
Agency
People Will Come To Love Their Oppression, To Adore The Technologies That Undo Their Capacities To Think.
Love
Technology
Thinking
Chronic Remorse, As All The Moralists Are Agreed, Is A Most Undesirable Sentiment. If You Have Behaved Badly, Repent, Make What Amends You Can And Address Yourself To The Task Of Behaving Better Next Time. On No Account Brood Over Your Wrongdoing. Rolling In The Muck Is Not The Best Way Of Getting Clean.
Life
Forgiveness
Time
To Those Who Think That Liberty Is A Good Thing, And That It May Someday Be Possible For People To Live In A Society Fit For Free, Fully Human Individuals, A Thorough Education In The Nature Of Language, Its Uses And Abuses, Seems Indispensable.
Thinking
People
Abuse
No Less Than War Or Statecraft, The History Of Economics Has Its Heroic Ages.
War
Age
Heroic
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.
Civilization
Medicine
Choices
The Consistent Thinker, The Consistently Moral Man, Is Either A Walking Mummy Or Else, If He Has Not Succeeded In Stifling All His Vitality, A Fanatical Monomaniac.
Men
Vitality
Ethics
We Shall Be Permitted To Live On This Planet Only For As Long As We Treat All Nature With Compassion And Intelligence.
Compassion
Long
Treats
Abused As We Abuse It At Present, Dramatic Art Is In No Sense Cathartic; It Is Merely A Form Of Emotional Masturbation. It Is The Rarest Thing To Find A Player Who Has Not Had His Character Affected For The Worse By The Practice Of His Profession. Nobody Can Make A Habit Of Self-exhibition, Nobody Can Exploit His Personality For The Sake Of Exercising A Kind Of Hypnotic Power Over Others, And Remain Untouched By The Process.
Art
Character
Exercise
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.
Language Words
Levels
Able
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.
Motivation
Men
Past
Only One More Indispensable Massacre Of Capitalists Or Communists Or Fascists Or Christians Or Heretics, And There We Are In The Golden Future.
Christian
Golden
Communist
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.
Real
War
Political
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.
Art
Way
Reason
Orthodoxy Is The Diehard Of The World Of Thought. It Learns Not, Neither Can It Forget.
Orthodoxy
Prejudice
World
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.
Beautiful
Design
May
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.
Real
Philosophy
Mean
Chaos And Ineptitude Are Anti-human; But So Too Is A Superlatively Efficient Government, Equipped With All The Products Of A Highly Developed Technology.
Technology
Government
Ineptitude
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.
Men
Wife
Greed
The Secret Of Genius Is To Carry The Spirit Of The Child Into Old Age, Which Mean Never Losing Your Enthusiasm.
Birthday
Children
Mean
Good Action And Thoughts Produce Consequences Which Tend To Neutralize, Or Put A Stop To, The Result Of Evil Thoughts And Actions. For As We Give Up The Life Of Self (and Note That, Like Forgiveness, Repentance And Humility Are Also Special Cases Of Giving), As We Abandon What The German Mystics Called "the I, Me, Mine," We Make Ourselves Progressively Capable Of Receiving Grace. By Grace We Are Enabled To Know Reality More Completely, And This Knowledge Of Reality Helps Us To Give Up More Of The Life Of Selfhood - And So On, In A Mounting Spiral Of Illumination And Regeneration.
Giving Up
Humility
Reality
Children Are Remarkable For Their Intelligence And Ardor, For Their Curiosity, Their Intolerance Of Shams, The Clarity And Ruthlessness Of Their Vision.
Children
Curiosity
Vision
If We Must Play The Theological Game, Let Us Never Forget That It Is A Game. Religion, It Seems To Me, Can Survive Only As A Consciously Accepted System Of Make-believe.
Believe
Games
Play
Nonsense Is An Assertion Of Man's Spiritual Freedom In Spite Of All The Oppressions Of Circumstance.
Spiritual
Freedom
Men
Family, Monogamy, Romance. Everywhere Exclusiveness, A Narrow Channelling Of Impulse And Energy.
Romance
Energy
Monogamy
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.
Philosophy
Believe
People
Pleasure Cannot Be Shared; Like Pain, It Can Only Be Experienced Or Inflicted, And When We Give Pleasure To Our Lovers Or Bestow Charity Upon The Needy, We Do So, Not To Gratify The Object Of Our Benevolence, But Only Ourselves. For The Truth Is That We Are Kind For The Same Reason As We Are Cruel, In Order That We May Enhance The Sense Of Our Own Power.
Pain
Order
Giving
It Is In The Social Sphere, In The Realm Of Politics And Economics, That The Will To Order Becomes Really Dangerous.
Order
Spheres
Economics
Given A Fair Chance, Human Beings Can Govern Themselves, And Govern Themselves Better
Chance
Given
Humans
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