Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Afterword (1984)
Context: A culture-bearing book, like a mule, bears the culture on its back. No one should sit down to write one deliberately. Culture-bearing books occur almost accidentally, like a sudden change in the stock market. There are books of high quality that are an part of the culture, but that is not the same. They are a part of it. They aren't carrying it anywhere. They may talk about insanity sympathetically, for example, because that's the standard cultural attitude. But they don't carry any suggestion that insanity might be something other than sickness or degeneracy.
“Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.”
Variant: You can't consume much if you sit still and read books.
Source: Brave New World (1932), Ch. 3<!-- p. 50 -->
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Aldous Huxley 290
English writer 1894–1963Related quotes
“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
As quoted in "Bradbury Still Believes in Heat of ‘Fahrenheit 451’" http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19930312&slug=1689996, interview by Misha Berson, in ', credited to "Ray Bradbury, quoted by Misha Berson in Seattle Times", in "Quotable Quotes", The Reader's Digest, Vol. 144, No. 861, January 1994, p. 25 http://books.google.com/books?output=html&id=ZqqUAAAAIAAJ&q=%22people+to+stop+reading%22#search_anchor), or an indirect reference to the re-quoting in Reader's Digest (such as: The Times Book of Quotations (Philip Howard, ed.), 2000, Times Books and HarperCollins, p. 93
Variant: We're not teaching kids to read and write and think. … There's no reason to burn books if you don't read them.
As quoted in "At 80, Ray Bradbury Still Fighting the Future He Foresaw" http://www.raybradbury.com/articles_peoria.html, interview by Roger Moore, in The Peoria Journal Star (August 2000)
Context: The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. Look at the magazines, the newspapers around us – it's all junk, all trash, tidbits of news. The average TV ad has 120 images a minute. Everything just falls off your mind. … You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
“I read a lot of books that are, for lack of a better word, cross-cultural.”
Academy of Achievement interview (2006)
Context: I read a lot of books that are, for lack of a better word, cross-cultural. I find movies and books that take me — transport me to another culture are the things that I'm most interested in, and always have been.
On how Asian-Americans might circumvent the feeling of being underrepresented in mainstream culture in in “'God, I was disgusting!' – Ali Wong on why women's bodies are the last taboo” https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/oct/17/god-i-was-disgusting-ali-wong-on-why-womens-bodies-are-the-last-taboo in The Guardian (2019 Oct 17)
Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 233
“you find magic wherever you look. sit back and relax. all you need is a book”
Variant: You can find magic
wherever you look.
Sit back and relax,
all you need is a book.
Source: The Cat in the Hat