“At this point we find ourselves confronted by a very disquieting question: Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge?”

—  Aldous Huxley , book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 12 (p. 116)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "At this point we find ourselves confronted by a very disquieting question: Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge?" by Aldous Huxley?
Aldous Huxley photo
Aldous Huxley 290
English writer 1894–1963

Related quotes

Samuel Johnson photo

“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

April 18, 1775, p. 258
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

Maya Angelou photo

“We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.”

Maya Angelou book Letter to My Daughter

Source: Letter to My Daughter

“The thoughts we choose to act upon define us to others, the ones we do not define us to ourselves.”

Yahia Lababidi (1973)

Signposts to Elsewhere (2008)

Karl Jaspers photo

“Our questions and answers are in part determined by the historical tradition in which we find ourselves.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

On My Philosopy (1941)
Context: Our questions and answers are in part determined by the historical tradition in which we find ourselves. We apprehend truth from our own source within the historical tradition.
The content of our truth depends upon our appropriating the historical foundation. Our own power of generation lies in the rebirth of what has been handed down to us. If we do not wish to slip back, nothing must be forgotten; but if philosophising is to be genuine our thoughts must arise from our own source. Hence all appropriation of tradition proceeds from the intentness of our own life. The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.

John Polanyi photo

“When, as we must often do, we fear science, we really fear ourselves. Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge.”

John Polanyi (1929) Hungarian-Canadian chemist

Nobel Prize acceptance speech http://www.utoronto.ca/jpolanyi/nobel_prize/, Nobel Banquet in Stockholm (1986)

“As compassion deepens, we find ourselves developing a nobility of the heart. Increasingly, and often to our surprise, we respond to difficult situations with calmness, clarity and directness. A quiet fearlessness or confidence is present as we no longer fear that we will compromise our own integrity. We find, too, a joy, a joy which arises from the knowledge that our every act is meaningful and helpful to the world.”

Ken McLeod (1948) Canadian lama

Awakening Compassion http://www.unfetteredmind.org/awakening-compassion. Unfettered Mind http://www.unfetteredmind.org. (Topic: Practice)

Thomas Merton photo

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Variant: Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone we find it with another.
Source: Love and Living

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge-and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves- how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves?”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

Preface, Section 1
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

Paul Keating photo

“A familiar question for Australians is how much we are a product of our circumstances, and how much we are what we have made ourselves to be. In truth, by the act of migration the country was made: by that voluntary act and by the emigrants' ambitions it was built.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

Address to the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of parliament of the Republic of Ireland, 20 September, 1993.

Related topics