Brave New World Quotes

Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations 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.

If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.

I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.

Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

...most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.

All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy." "Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence. "I claim them all," said the Savage at last.

I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then," he added in a lower tone, "I ate my own wickedness.

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

...reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays....

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 do up one's trousers with zippers," said the Controller sarcastically. "You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons–that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to.

The Savage nodded, frowning. "You got rid of them. Yes, that's just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether 'tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows or outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them...But you don't do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It's too easy." ..."What you need," the Savage went on, "is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here.

One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.

A love of nature keeps no factories busy.

It is natural to believe in God when you're alone-- quite alone, in the night, thinking about death.

There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.

I want God, I want poetry, I want danger, I want freedom, I want sin.

We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters.

Did you eat something that didn't agree with you?" asked Bernard. The Savage nodded. "I ate civilization.

And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue — liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.

Did you ever feel, as though you had something inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that you aren't using - you know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines?.

Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning, truth and beauty can't.

Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today.

I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.

We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability.

When people are suspicious with you, you start being suspicious with them.

It isn’t only art that is incompatible with happiness, it’s also science. Science is dangerous, we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.

Happiness has got to be paid for. You're paying for it, Mr. Watson–paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too.

Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.

Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly.

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery.

This concern with the basic condition of freedom — the absence of physical constraint — is unquestionably necessary, but is not all that is necessary. It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free — to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national State, or of some private interest within the nation, want him to think, feel and act.

What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you?.

They're old; they're about God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now" "But God doesn't change" "Men do though.

The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg- eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.

Man is an intelligence, not served by, but in servitude to his organs.

O brave new world that has such people in it.

God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make a choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.

That is the secret of happiness and virtue -- liking what you've got to do.

To be excited is still to be unsatisfied.

Well, I'd rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here.

I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms for example...

‎"But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.

Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the flood is passion, the flood is even madness: it depends on the force of the current, the height and strength of the barrier. The unchecked stream flows smoothly down its appointed channels into a calm well being.

A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.

Isn't there something in living dangerously?.

Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly color. I'm so glad I'm a Beta.

One can’t have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. You’re paying for it, Mr. Watson - paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty.

But every one belongs to every one else.

Round pegs in square holes tend to have dangerous thoughts about the social system and tend to infect others with their discontents.

In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.

He was a philosopher, if you know what that was.’ ‘A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and earth,’ said the Savage promptly. ‘Quite so….

All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.

The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men.

You got rid of them. Yes, that’s just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether ‘tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them… But you don’t do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It’s too easy.

Her cheeks were flushed. She caught hold of the Savage's arm and pressed it, limp, against her side. He looked down at her for a moment, pale, pained, desiring, and ashamed of his desire. He was not worthy, not... Their eyes for a moment met. What treasures hers promised! A queen's ransom of temperament. Hastily he looked away, disengaged his imprisoned arm. He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of.

But God doesn't change.' 'Men do, though.' 'What difference does that make?' 'All the difference in the world.

Then you think there is no God?" "No, I think there quite probably is one." "Then why? …" Mustapha Mond checked him. "But he manifests himself in different ways to different men. In premodern times he manifested himself as the being that's described in these books. Now …" "How does he manifest himself now?" asked the Savage. "Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren't there at all.

Not quite. I'm thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feel that I've got something important to say and the power to say it—only I don't know what it is, and I can't make any use of the power.

As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensating to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.

You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases.

O wonder!' he was saying; and his eyes shone, his face was brightly flushed. 'How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! ... O brave new world! O brave new world that has such people in it.

Generalities are intellectually necessary evils.

Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east...

Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy!.