That is the secret of happiness and virtue--liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny.
Moral education ... ought never, in any circumstances, to be rational.
What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.
Wheels must turn steadily, but cannot turn untended. There must be men to tend them, men as steady as the wheels upon their axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment.
Those who feel themselves despised do well to look despising.
Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches.
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.
When the individual feels, the community reels.
Civilization is sterilization.
The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray.
It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted.
Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself.
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.
Some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone.
Kiss me till I'm in a coma.
You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art.
Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations 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.
All our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook.
We can't allow science to undo its own good work.
The Gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; providence takes its cue from men.
I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.
More Aldous Huxley Quotes
