Aldous Huxley Quotes About Philosophy

Quotes about: Philosophy

• 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

  Spiritual, Philosophy, Humanity

• 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.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Political, Doubt

• 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.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Believe, People

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “Brave New World”

• 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 simultaneously 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.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Political, Doubt

  Aldous Huxley (2001). “Complete Essays: 1936-1938”, Ivan R Dee

• The Perennial Philosophy is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula, tat tvam asi ('That art thou'); the Atman, or immanent eternal Self, is one with Brahman, the Absolute Principle of all existence; and the last end of every human being, is to discover the fact for himself, to find out who he really is.

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Philosophy, Self

  Aldous Huxley (2012). “The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics, East and West”, p.2, Harper Collins

• The ductless glands secrete among other things our moods, our aspirations, our philosophy of life.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Science

  Aldous Huxley (2000). “Complete Essays: 1930-1935”, Ivan R Dee

• 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.

  Aldous Huxley

  Life, Beauty, God

  Aldous Huxley (1957). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley”

• 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.

  Aldous Huxley

  Love, Children, Philosophy

  Aldous Huxley (1970). “Collected Works: Do what you will”

• Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Believe, Belief

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “Brave New World”

• The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feel there's a God?"
  "You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with zippers," said the Controller sarcastically. "You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! 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."

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Believe, Zippers

  "Brave New World". Book by Aldous Huxley. Chapter 17, 1932.

• 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.

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Philosophy, Simple

  Aldous Huxley (1954). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Point counter point”

• When an artist deserts to the side of the angels, it is the most odious of treasons.

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Philosophy, Angel

  Aldous Huxley (1956). “The collected works of 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

  Life, Education, Philosophy

  Aldous Huxley (2000). “Complete Essays: 1926-1929”, Ivan R Dee

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

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, History, Firsts

• 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.

  Aldous Huxley

  Real, Philosophy, Mean

• What drivel it all is!... A string of words called religion. Another string of words called philosophy. Half a dozen other stringscalled political ideals. And all the words either ambiguous or meaningless. And people getting so excited about them they'll murder their neighbours for using a word they don't happen to like. A word that probably doesn't mean as much as a good belch. Just a noise without even the excuse of gas on the stomach.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Mean, People

  Aldous Huxley (2015). “After Many a Summer”, p.54, Random House

• Hinduism the perennial philosophy that is at the core of all religions.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Hinduism, Core

• The moral peril to humanity of thoughtlessly accepting these conveniences [of materialism] (with their inherent disadvantages) as constituting a philosophy of life is now becoming apparent. For the implications of this disruptive materialism... are that human beings are nothing but bodies, animals, machines.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Animal, Humanity

• Our conviction that the world is meaningless is due in part to the fact (discussed in a later paragraph) that the philosophy of meaningless lends itself very effectively to furthering the ends of political and erotic passion; in part to a genuine intellectual error - the error of identifying the world of science, a world from which all meaning has deliberately been excluded, with ultimate reality.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Passion, Reality

  Aldous Huxley (2017). “Ends and Means: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals”, p.153, Routledge

• To travel is to discover that everybody is wrong. The philosophies, the civilizations which seem, at a distance, so superior to those current at home, all prove on a close inspection to be in their own way just as hopelessly imperfect.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Distance, Home

  Aldous Huxley (2000). “Complete Essays: 1926-1929”, Ivan R Dee

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