100 Aldous Huxley Quotes (On Life, Propaganda, Happiness)

Top 10 Quotes – Life – Freedom – Happiness – Reality – Propaganda – Deep – More quotes – Visual – Takeaways – Further Readings

Here are 100 of the best Aldous Huxley quotes.

And they will blow your mind.

You will learn 3 vital things:

• The value of thinking for yourself
• Why you should limit distractions
• Why you should seek truth, not comfort

But who was Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)?

• An English writer and philosopher
• He had profound insights into society, technology, and human  nature
• He was a critic of consumerism and totalitarianism

Although he lived long ago, you’ll notice that his quotes offer timeless warnings about mass conformity and scientific advancements.

In sum, I guarantee you’ll learn a ton and even gain a new perspective on your technology usage and propaganda.

Let’s begin!

Top 10 Aldous Huxley Quotes

Happiness is never grand. Aldous Huxley

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. Aldous Huxley

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion. Aldous Huxley

We live together, we act on, and react to one another; but always, and in all circumstances, we are by ourselves. Aldous Huxley

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. Aldous Huxley

It isn’t a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past. Aldous Huxley

If you don’t gamble, you’ll never win. Aldous Huxley

The more you know, the more you see. Aldous Huxley

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood. Aldous Huxley

A totally unmystical world would be a world totally blind and insane. Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley Quotes About Life

Dream in a pragmatic way. Aldous Huxley

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

In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions. Aldous Huxley

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. Aldous Huxley

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. Aldous Huxley

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. Aldous Huxley

I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly. Aldous Huxley

We shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence. Aldous Huxley

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

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. Aldous Huxley

If one is not oneself a sage or saint, the best thing one can do is to study the words of those who were. Aldous Huxley

I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself. Aldous Huxley (Point Counter Point)

Words form the thread on which we string our experiences. Aldous Huxley

We are all geniuses up to the age of ten. Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley Quotes About Freedom

I like being myself. Myself and nasty. Aldous Huxley

No social stability without individual stability. Aldous Huxley

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. Aldous Huxley

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, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered. Aldous Huxley

Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty – his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure. Aldous Huxley

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. Aldous Huxley

Liberties aren’t given, they are taken. Aldous Huxley

Related

• 55 Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes (On Happiness, Life, Love)
• 65 Ayn Rand Quotes (On Life, Society, Happiness)
• 37 Carl Jung Quotes – On Life, Acceptance, Personal Growth

Aldous Huxley Quotes About Happiness, Misery

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities. Aldous Huxley

Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today. Aldous Huxley

Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. Aldous Huxley

I can sympathize with people’s pains, but not with their pleasure. There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness. Aldous Huxley

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. Aldous Huxley

Most lead lives at worst so painful, at 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 principle appetites of the soul. Aldous Huxley

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing. Aldous Huxley

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm. Aldous Huxley

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. Aldous Huxley

It’s a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research and study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other. Aldous Huxley

The more a man knows about himself in relation to every kind of experience, the greater his chance of suddenly, one fine morning, realizing who in fact he is. Aldous Huxley

Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities. Aldous Huxley

If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. Aldous Huxley

Addiction is an increasing desire for an act that gives less and less satisfaction. Aldous Huxley

If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely. Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley Quotes About Reality

Reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays. Aldous Huxley

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. Aldous Huxley

The trouble with fiction… is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense. Aldous Huxley

Cynical realism is the intelligent man’s best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation. Aldous Huxley

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. Aldous Huxley

The world is an illusion, but an illusion which we must take seriously. Aldous Huxley

You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad. Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley Quotes About Propaganda, Mass Media, Society

Never have so many been manipulated so much by so few. Aldous Huxley

Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice. Aldous Huxley

This Power Elite directly employs several millions of the country´s working force in its factories, offices and stores, controls many millions more by lending them the money to buy its products, and, through its ownership of the media of mass communication, influences the thoughts, the feelings and the actions of virtually everybody. To parody the words of W. Churchill, never have so many been manipulated so much by few. Aldous Huxley

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. Aldous Huxley

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. Aldous Huxley

The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. Aldous Huxley

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. Aldous Huxley

Unlike the masses, intellectuals have a taste for rationality and an interest in facts. Aldous Huxley

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. Aldous Huxley

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history. Aldous Huxley

People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. Aldous Huxley

Countless audiences passively soak in the tepid bath of nonsense. No mental effort is demanded of them, no participation; they need only sit and keep their eyes open. Aldous Huxley #smartphones

Dictators can always consolidate their tyranny by an appeal to patriotism. Aldous Huxley

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Aldous Huxley

Deep Aldous Huxley Quotes

I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Aldous Huxley

Every ceiling reached becomes a floor. Aldous Huxley

When the sun rises, it rises for everyone. Aldous Huxley

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. Aldous Huxley

Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unshown marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves. Aldous Huxley

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

Love casts out fear; but conversely fear casts out love. And not only love. Fear also casts out intelligence, casts out goodness, casts out all thought of beauty and truth. Aldous Huxley

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. Aldous Huxley

We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way. Aldous Huxley

Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations. Aldous Huxley

Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. Aldous Huxley

That all men are equal is a proposition which at ordinary times no sane individual has ever given his assent. Aldous Huxley

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know. Aldous Huxley

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception. Aldous Huxley

There are many kinds of gods. Therefore there are many kinds of men. Aldous Huxley

More Aldous Huxley Quotes

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

To be a fool at the right time is also an art. Aldous Huxley

Generalized intelligence and mental alertness are the most powerful enemies of dictatorship and at the same time the basic conditions of effective democracy. Aldous Huxley

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. Aldous Huxley

The Bhagavad-Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. It is one of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed; hence its enduring value is subject not only to India but to all of humanity. Aldous Huxley

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

A love of nature keeps no factories busy. Aldous Huxley

For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. Aldous Huxley

Death is the only thing we haven’t succeeded in completely vulgarizing. Aldous Huxley

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. Aldous Huxley

The proper study of mankind is books. Aldous Huxley

Several excuses are always less convincing than one. Aldous Huxley

All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant. Aldous Huxley

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell. Aldous Huxley

Every man’s memory is his private literature. Aldous Huxley

Visual For Aldous Huxley

The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence. Aldous Huxley

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth. Albert Einstein

Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it. Leo Tolstoy

Do your own thing on your own terms and get what you came here for. Oliver James

Do your thing and don’t care if they like it. Tina Fey

Key Takeaways From Aldous Huxley

Here are 5 simple things you can learn from Aldous Huxley:

• Think for yourself. Don’t blindly follow society. Question norms and form your own opinions. “People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”
• Limit distractions. Avoid being consumed by entertainment and technology. Focus on what truly matters. “In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”
• Stay curious. Keep learning. Explore new ideas. And expand your perspective. “Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice.”
• Practice mindfulness. Be present in the moment and develop your self-awareness. “Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”
• Seek truth, not comfort. Embrace uncomfortable truths instead of choosing easy illusions. “Never have so many been manipulated so much by so few.”

Further Readings

• Topic: Life
• 75 Words of Wisdom From The Best Minds (Ever)
• 90 Marcel Proust Quotes (On Life, Love, Suffering)
• 61 Sigmund Freud Quotes (On Life, Human Nature, Love)
• 91 Alan Watts Quotes: A Treasure Trove of Insights
• Aldous Huxley on Amazon
• Aldous Huxley on Wikipedia

I hope you enjoyed these inspiring quotes by Aldous Huxley.

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