Aldous Huxley cytaty

strona 10

„Ja tam wolę być nieszczęśliwy, niż pozostawać w stanie fałszywej, kłamliwej szczęśliwości, w jakiej tu się żyje.”

„Wzbudzać miłość jest oczywiście rzeczą przyjemną, ale miłość nie powinna być zbyt gwałtowna ani zbyt długotrwała. Mężczyźni stają się wówczas nudni.”

„Potrafię współczuć cudzym bólom, ale nie przyjemnościom. Jest coś dziwnie nudnego w szczęściu innych ludzi.”

„Zbrojenia, powszechne zadłużenie i zaplanowane wychodzenie wszystkiego z mody – oto trzy filary prosperity Zachodu.”

„Zaledwie jeden człowiek na milion potrafi myśleć tak, że przynosi to korzyść jemu i innym.”

„Każdego określa nie tylko to, co on sam mówi, lecz charakter ludzi, którzy mają podobny światopogląd.”

„Dla swego psa każdy jest Napoleonem. To powód nieustającej popularności psów.”

„Kiedy ludzie są wobec ciebie podejrzliwi, sam stajesz się podejrzliwy wobec nich.”

„Dopóki ludzie będą wielbić Cezarów i Napoleonów, dopóty będą się oni regularnie pojawiać i unieszczęśliwiać ludzkość.”

„Rozumie pan, to jest zakazane. Ponieważ jednak ja tutaj ustanawiam prawa, więc i ja mogę je łamać. Bezkarnie, panie Marks - dodał zwracając się do Bernarda - Czego pan, obawiam się, nie może czynić."

- Mustafa Mond, Nowy Wspaniały Świat”

„Rządzenie to sprawa stołka, nie kołka. Rządzi się przy pomocy mózgu i pośladków, nie pięści."
- Aldous Huxley "Nowy, wspaniały świat”

„Dzięki ci, Fordzie! Nie był ostatni. Trzy spośród dwunastu ustawionych wokół okrągłego stołu krzeseł były jeszcze nie zajęte. Wśliznął się na najbliższe z nich w miarę niepostrzeżenie i oto już gotów był marszczyć brwi na widok wchodzących spóźnialskich."
- Bernard Marks, "Nowy wspaniały świat" Aldous Huxley”

„Sto powtórzeń przez trzy noce tygodniowo w ciągu czterech lat, pomyślał Bernard Marks, fachowiec od hipnopedii. Sześćdziesiąt dwa tysiące czterysta powtórzeń przeradza się w jedna prawdę. Idioci!"
- Bernard Marks, "Nowy, wspaniały świat" Aldous Huxley”

„Na antypodach umysłu jesteśmy mniej lub bardziej wyzwoleni z języka, przebywamy poza systemem myślenia pojęciowego. W rezultacie nasza percepcja przedmiotów wizyjnych posiada całą świeżość, całą nagość intensywności doświadczenia, które nigdy nie było werbalizowane ani przekładane na martwą abstrakcję.”

„W miłości istnieje zawsze przymieszka nienawiści.”

„Tajemnica szczęścia i cnoty tkwi w tym, by lubić to, co musi się robić.”

„Wiara jest czymś zupełnie odmiennym od wierzeń.”

„Co należy zrobić po upadku? To, co robią dzieci: podnieść się.”

„Gdy jednostka czuje, wspólnota szwankuje.”

„Nigdy tak wielu nie było manipulowanych przez tak nielicznych.”

„Słowa są kanwą, na której oplatamy nasze słowa.”

„Śmierć to jedyna rzecz, której nie udało się nam całkowicie zwulgaryzować.”

„Czasem lepiej zbłądzić, niż zbyt nachalnie pytać o drogę.”

„Amerykanie są narodem, który zbudzić można jedynie 3-krotnym kopaniem w drzwi; ale potem już nie mogą zasnąć.”

„Często szuka się sensu życia przy pomocy bezsensownych metod.”

„Tylko jeszcze jedna niezbędna masakra kapitalistów albo komunistów lub faszystów, lub chrześcijan, lub heretyków, a już znajdziemy się w złotej przyszłości.”

„Kto umie czytać, posiadł klucz do wielkich czynów, do nieprzeczuwanych możliwości, do upajająco pięknego, udanego i sensownego życia.”

„A więc teraz – powiedział Will – proponuje pani uczynić ich nieszczęśliwymi, w nadziei, że to przywróci im wiarę w Boga. Zgadzam się, to jedna z metod nawracania.”

„Z historią jest jak z mięsnym pasztetem – nie należy się przyglądać, jak się go przyrządza.”

„W szczęściu zawsze znajdziesz kawałek domowych pantofli.”

„Jeżeli chce się żyć każdą nadarzającą się chwilą, trzeba umierać dla każdej innej chwili.”

„Cały kłopot z fikcją literacką polega na tym - rzekł John Rivers - że za dużo w niej sensu. W rzeczywistości nigdy nie ma sensu”

“When will you women understand that one isn’t insanely in love? All one asks for is a quiet life, which you won’t allow one to have.”

“To aspire to be superhuman is a most discreditable admission that you lack the guts, the wit, the moderating judgment to be successfully and consummately human.”

“Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare it is simply disgraceful.”

“All that the conscious ego can do is to formulate wishes, which are then carried out by forces which it controls very little and understands not at all.”

“I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation — the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.”

“Wherever we turn we find that the real obstacles to peace are human will and feeling, human convictions, prejudices, opinions. If we want to get rid of war we must get rid first of all of its psychological causes. Only when this has been done will the rulers of the nations even desire to get rid of the economic and political causes.”

“We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.”

“Death conditioning begins at eighteen months. Every tot spends two mornings a week in a Hospital for the Dying. All the best toys are kept there, and they get chocolate cream on death days. They learn to take dying as a matter of course.”

“Strange," mused the Director, as they turned away, "strange to think that even in Our Ford's day most games were played without more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting. imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It's madness.”

“I don't like it,"" said Lenina. ""I don't like it."" She liked even less what awaited her at the entrance to the pueblo, where their guide had left them while he went inside for instructions. The dirt, to start with, the piles of rubbish, the dust, the dogs, the flies. Her face wrinkled up into a grimace of disgust. She held her handkerchief to her nose.
""But how can they live like this?"" she broke out in a voice of indignant incredulity. (It wasn't possible.)
Bernard shrugged his shoulders philosophically. ""Anyhow,"" he said, ""they've been doing it for the last five or six thousand years. So I suppose they must be used to it by now.""
""But cleanliness is next to fordliness,"" she insisted.
""Yes, and civilization is sterilization,"" Bernard went on, concluding on a tone of irony the second hypnopaedic lesson in elementary hygiene. ""But these people have never heard of Our Ford, and they aren't civilized."" ”

“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.”

“The really important facts were that spatial relationships had ceased to matter very much and that my mind was perceiving the world in terms of other than spatial categories. At ordinary times the eye concerns itself with such problems as where? — how far?”

“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies — all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.”

“The second doctrine of the Perennial Philosophy — that it is possible to know the Divine Ground by a direct intuition higher than discursive reasoning — is to be found in all the great religions of the world. A philosopher who is content merely to know about the ultimate Reality — theoretically and by hearsay — is compared by Buddha to a herdsman of other men’s cows. Mohammed uses an even homelier barnyard metaphor. For him the philosopher who has not realized his metaphysics is just an ass bearing a load of books. Christian, Hindu, Taoist teachers wrote no less emphatically about the absurd pretensions of mere learning and analytic reasoning.”

“I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's been beneficent. … It's curious … to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to imagine that it could go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasise from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific resarch was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled — after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.”

“Every crusader is apt to go mad. He is haunted by the wickedness which is attributed to his enemies; it becomes in some sort a part of him.”

“It is only by poets that the life of any epoch can be synthesized. Encyclopaedias and guides to knowledge cannot do it, for the good reason that they affect only the intellectual surface of a man’s life. The lower layers, the core of his being, they leave untouched.”

“'Our kingdom go' is the necessary and unavoidable corollary of 'Thy kingdom come.' For the more there is of self, the less there is of God.”

“Rational and kindly behavior tends to produce good results and these results remain good even when the behavior which produced them was itself produced by a pill.”