Aldous Huxley
English writer, philosopher, and one of the great literary explorers of the perennial philosophy and the chemistry of consciousness in the twentieth century. Born in 1894 to one of the most distinguished intellectual families in England, he authored more than fifty books — novels (Brave New World, Island), essays (The Doors of Perception, Heaven and Hell), and his late masterpiece The Perennial Philosophy (1945), which gathered the testimony of mystics from every world tradition into a single anthology. His mescaline experiments in the 1950s pioneered the modern psychedelic movement; his lifelong study of Vedanta, Buddhism, and Christian mysticism made him one of the West's most credible bridges to the contemplative East. He died in Los Angeles in 1963, on the same day as the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
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Quotes by Aldous Huxley
106 quotes“Every man's memory is his private literature.”
“The miracles of technology cause us to live in a hectic, clockwork world.”
“Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of great sculpture.”
“Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.”
“At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice, and the desire for power.”
“Liberation can never be achieved without contemplative practice.”
“To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain.”
“What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive.”
“Most ignorance is willful.”
“The more comprehensive the knowledge, the more comprehensive the love.”
“In the deepest sense, the true mystic always has been and always will be a contemplative.”
“All consciousness is a kind of language.”
“Words don't say everything. The body knows what the mind cannot articulate.”
“There are religions that are built on doctrine. There are others built on contemplation. The latter alone are perennial.”
“Despite the awesome forces of the modern technological civilization, an individual life can still be a work of art.”
“Every road to liberation begins with the seeing of what is.”
“Selfless behavior begins where ego ends.”
“The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.”
“To know God, you must love God; to love God, you must know God.”
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