Aldous Huxley Quotes

Tolstoy said, 'The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed either by a change of life or by a change of conscience.' Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization are unlimited. They allow us to live in luxury and indifference while others, whom we could help if we chose to, starve and go to hell.

I consider myself a fairly ethical individual while I do have a lot of dichotomies within me. We're all victims of our own hypocrisy at times.

I know that charity covereth a multitude of sins; but it does not call evil good, because a good man has done it; it does not excuse inconsistencies, because the inconsistent brother has a high name and a fervent spirit; crookedness and worldliness are still crookedness and worldliness, though exhibited in one who seems to have reached no common height of attainment.

Hypocrisy is bad, but it's not the worst vice in the world. If I declared “murder is wrong” and then killed somebody, I would hope that the top count against me would be homicide, not hypocrisy. Liberal elites ' particularly in Hollywood ' believe that hypocrisy is the gravest sin in the world, which is why they advocate their own lifestyles for the entire world: Sleep with whomever you want, listen to your own instincts, be true to yourself, blah, blah, blah. Our fear of hypocrisy is forcing us to live in a world where gluttons are fine, so long as they champion gluttony.

Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, even a duty.

Morality is a social necessity

… he must deceive, misrepresent, leave false impressions … and trust to charm, loyalty and the result to make up for it…. A great man cannot be a good man.

'Tis very strange Men should be so fond of being thought wickeder than they are.

We try to make virtues out of the faults we have no wish to correct.

My power for good, whatever it may, would be gone if I didn’t try to live up to the doctrines I have tried to preach.

I'm not saying I'm perfect. But I'm someone who analyses and reflects on what I do, whether it's in keeping with the ethics that I talk about in public. That's how I've been all my life.

Am I self-righteous? Why not? It's not like I can count on you to be righteous for me.

It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad; his life may be true, or it may be false; it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up; the bad man destroys himself.

I wonder why it is the man who pleads for mercy never gives it.

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

Now, men think, with regard to their conduct, that, if they were to lift themselves up gigantically and commit some crashing sin, they should never be able to hold up their heads; but they will harbor in their souls little sins, which are piercing and eating them away to inevitable ruin.

True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.

He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself (Christian morals).

People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us... It's people who claim that they're good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.

What, I should only trust good people? Man, good people get bought and sold every day. Might as well trust somebody evil once in a while, it makes no more or less sense.

...guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.

If I could, Sister James, I would certainly choose to live in innocence. But innocence can only be wisdom in a world without evil. Situations arise and we are confronted with wrongdoing and the need to act.

What is immoral for an individual to do, is immoral for a government to do

We are never more self-righteous than when giving up what we should have shunned all along.

To do good is noble. To tell others to do good is even nobler and much less trouble.