Aldous Huxley Quotes

Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.

Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.

The first type of abstraction from objects I shall refer to as simple abstraction, but the second type I shall call reflective abstraction, using this term in a double sense.

The abstract kills, the concrete saves.

Generalization is always a new influx of divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that attends it.

Metaphysics is a cobweb that the mind weaves around things.

The aims of scientific thought are to see the general in the particular and the eternal in the transitory.

This idea that there is generality in the specific is of far-reaching importance.

If you don't generalize you don't philosophize.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

The analysis of the thing is not the thing itself.

As soon as there is language, generality has entered the scene.

The more specific you are, the more general it'll be.

The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality.

There are no necessary evils in government. It's evils exist only in its abuses.

Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images.

I … think it is safer, when a practical question arises, to decide that question directly, and not indirectly, by deciding a general abstraction supposed to include it, and also including a great deal more.

Doubtless there are times when controversy becomes a necessary evil. But let us remember that it is an evil.

It is difficult to speak of the universal specifically.

The point of mathematics is that in it we have always got rid of the particular instance, and even of any particular sorts of entities. So that for example, no mathematical truths apply merely to fish, or merely to stones, or merely to colours. So long as you are dealing with pure mathematics, you are in the realm of complete and absolute abstraction. . . . Mathematics is thought moving in the sphere of complete abstraction from any particular instance of what it is talking about.

Abstraction is an esoteric language.

I can't understand nothingness. I can't understand it and I can't imagine it.

...That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.

The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.