Brave New World Freedom Quotes

• ‎"But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Brave New World, People

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “Brave New World”

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Real, Hipster, Brave New World

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

  93 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'd rather be myself," he said. "Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.

  Aldous Huxley

  Nasty, Said, Brave New World Technology

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations 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.

  Aldous Huxley

  Happiness, Struggle, Passion

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

  73 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters.

  Aldous Huxley

  Brave New World, Masters, Supreme

  Aldous Huxley (1933). “Retrospect: an omnibus of Aldous Huxley's books”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Aldous Huxley

  Reading, Book, Writing

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

  90 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Aldous Huxley

  Believe, Belief, Brave New World Technology

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

  120 Copy quote

  Show source

• And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue — liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.

  Aldous Huxley

  Happiness, Brave New World, Destiny

  Aldous Huxley (1933). “Retrospect: an omnibus of Aldous Huxley's books”

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning, truth and beauty can't.

  Aldous Huxley

  Happiness, Brave New World, Joy

  Aldous Huxley (1933). “Retrospect: an omnibus of Aldous Huxley's books”

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

  Aldous Huxley

  Powerful, Army, Brave New World

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

  95 Copy quote

  Show source

• Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly color. I'm so glad I'm a Beta.

  Aldous Huxley

  Children, Clever, Stupid

  "Brave New World". Book by Aldous Huxley, Chapter 2, 1932.

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.

  Aldous Huxley

  Lonely, Loneliness, Different

  Anthony Astrachan, Aldous Huxley (1984). “Aldous Huxley's Brave New World”, p.71, Barron's Educational Series

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• "All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
  "Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."
  There was a long silence.
  "I claim them all," said the Savage at last.

  Aldous Huxley

  Pain, Cancer, Long

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

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• No social stability without individual stability.

  Aldous Huxley

  Brave New World, Individual, Social

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.

  Aldous Huxley

  Civilization, Medicine, Choices

  62 Copy quote

• You can't make flivers without steel - and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they pratically can't help behaving as they ought to behave.

  Aldous Huxley

  Love, Mother, Children

  9 Copy quote

• Happiness has got to be paid for. You're paying for it, Mr. Watson–paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too.

  Aldous Huxley

  Too Much, Brave New World Happiness, Happens

  "Brave New World". Book by Aldous Huxley, Chapter 16, 1932.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the individual feels, the community reels.

  Aldous Huxley

  Brave New World, Community, Individual

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.

  Aldous Huxley

  Brave New World, Unhappy, Syphilis

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny.

  Aldous Huxley

  Brave New World, Destiny, People

  26 Copy quote

• In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.

  Aldous Huxley

  Men, Infinite, Distraction

  Aldous Huxley, Robert S. Baker, James Sexton (2002). “Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948”, Ivan R. Dee Publisher

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• But every one belongs to every one else

  Aldous Huxley

  Brave New World, Brave New World John, Brave New World Technology

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.

  Aldous Huxley

  Freedom, Brave New World, Views

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

  62 Copy quote

  Show source

• All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.

  Aldous Huxley

  Brave New World, Alcohol, Soma

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “Brave New World”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source