Skip to content

Philosophy Quotes by Aldous Huxley

45 Philosophy quotes by Aldous Huxley

All Philosophy quotes Aldous Huxley’s page

Aldous Huxley questions how we decide what to believe. He points out that philosophy makes us uneasy about things we think are obvious, while propaganda tells us to accept them without doubt. He also compares worship of beauty to moral ideas and notes that the Bhagavad‑Gita offers a clear plan for spiritual growth.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

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

Image

“Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.”

Image

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

Image

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

Image

“Not philosophers, but fret-sawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.”

Image

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

Image

How orderly philosophical is the landscape, are all the inhabitants of this World! It is the creation of a god who ever…

Image

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

Image

“-make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond,…

Image

The Bhagavad-Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. It is one of the most clear…

Image

The Bhagavad-Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. The Gita is one of the clearest…

Image

“Philosophy teaches us to feel uncertain about the things that seems to us self-evident. Propaganda, on the other hand, teaches us to…

Image

“[F]amiliarity with traditionally hallowed writings tends to breed, not indeed contempt, but something which, for practical purposes, is almost as bad -…

Image

Where beauty is worshipped for beauty's sake as a goddess, independent of and superior to morality and philosophy, the most horrible putrefaction…

Image

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons-that's…

Image

“He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct!…

Image

Knowing who in fact we are results in Good Being, and Good Being results in the most appropriate kind of good doing.…

Image

The Perennial Philosophy is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula, tat tvam asi ('That art thou'); the Atman, or immanent eternal…

Image

What drivel it all is!... A string of words called religion. Another string of words called philosophy. Half a dozen other stringscalled…

Image

“All philosophies and all religions—what are they but spiritual Tubes bored through the universe! Through these narrow tunnels, where all is recognisably…

Image

“Önerme şudur: Beyin, sinir sistemi ve duyu organlarının işlevi aslında eleyicidir, üretici değil. Her insan, her an kendi başına gelenleri anımsamak ve…

Image

To the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy, the question whether Progress is inevitable or even real is not a matter of primary…

Image

“God is, but at the same time God also is not. The Universe is governed by blind chance and at the same…

Image

“I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had not; and was able without…

Image

“I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able…

Image

“Neither agreeable nor disagreeable," I answered. "It just is." Istigkeit — wasn't that the word Meister Eckhart liked to use? "Is-ness." The…

Image

“There will never be enduring peace unless and until human beings come to accept a philosophy of life more adequate to the…

Image

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…

Image

“To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system.…

Image

“Among this bewildering multiplicity of ideals which shall we choose? The answer is that we shall choose none. For it is clear…

Image

From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow…

Image

“Wherever a choice has had to be made between the man of reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the…

Image

The pursuit of truth is just a polite name for the intellectual's favorite pastime of substituting simple and therefore false abstractions for…

Image

“Those who crusade not for God in themselves but against the devil in others, never succeed in leaving the world better, but…

Image

“He was a philosopher, if you know what that was.’ ‘A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven…

Image

For particulars, as everyone knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors…

Image

To travel is to discover that everybody is wrong. The philosophies, the civilizations which seem, at a distance, so superior to those…

Image

“As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for…

Image

Our conviction that the world is meaningless is due in part to the fact (discussed in a later paragraph) that the philosophy…

Image

A life-worshipper's philosophy is comprehensive. He is at one moment a positivist and at another a mystic: now haunted by the thought…

Image

Other authors on Philosophy

More by Aldous Huxley

“Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself.”

Man has an almost infinite capacity for taking things and people for granted and thereby missing out on the pleasure of being grateful that…

My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my…

Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the flood is passion, the flood is even madness.

Of course the Dharma-body of the Buddha was the hedge at the bottom of the garden. At the same time, and no less obviously,…

“The question for the man of sense is: Do we or do we not want to go to hell? And his answer is: No,…

“I’ll MAKE you be free whether you want to or not.’ -The Savage”

Thought of the incomprehensible sequence of changes and chances that make up a life, all the beauties and horrors and absurdities whose conjunctions create…

The third petition of the Lord's Prayer is repeated daily by millions who have not the slightest intention of letting anyone's will be done…

“Then what’s time for?” asked Lenina in some astonishment. Apparently, for going on walks in the Lake District; for that was what he now…

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

Speed, it seems to me, provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.

“What you need is a gramme of soma.” “All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.”

To be enlightened is to be aware, always, of total reality in its immanent otherness - to be aware of it and yet remain…

“Quote of the day:Quote of the day: A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be…