All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
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
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Aldous Huxley
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.
Aldous Huxley
Several excuses are always less convincing than one.
Aldous Huxley
By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms— elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial—but democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.
Aldous Huxley
It is in the social sphere, in the realm of politics and economics, that the Will to Order becomes really dangerous.
Aldous Huxley
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.
Aldous Huxley
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
Aldous Huxley
Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
Aldous Huxley
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.
Aldous Huxley