Famous Quotes by Aldous Huxley (92 Quotations)

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.

Aldous Huxley – [Reform]

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.

Aldous Huxley – [Brotherhood]

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.

Aldous Huxley – [Vision]

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.

Aldous Huxley – [Charm]

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.

Aldous Huxley – [Forgiveness]

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

Aldous Huxley – [Arts and Artists]

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.

Aldous Huxley – [Nations]

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

Aldous Huxley – [Solitude]

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.

Aldous Huxley – [Education]

The only completely consistent people are the dead.

Aldous Huxley – [Consistency]

The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

Aldous Huxley – [Morality]

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.

Aldous Huxley – [Desire]

There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all the virtues are of no avail.

Aldous Huxley – [Talent]

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

Aldous Huxley – [Self-improvement]

There's only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God.

Aldous Huxley – [Sacrifice]

Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something.

Aldous Huxley – [Self-confidence]

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

Aldous Huxley – [Thoughts and Thinking]

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.

Aldous Huxley – [Popularity]

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.

Aldous Huxley – [Travel and Tourism]

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.

Aldous Huxley – [Mystics and Mysticism]