Aldous Huxley Quotes

I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security - out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction.

The world has proclaimed the reign of freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs? Nothing but slavery and self-destruction! For the world says: "You have desires and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the most rich and powerful. Don't be afraid of satisfying them and even multiply your desires."

We inhabit a world where we're taught that we can have what we desire, and tend to act on it - the least we can do is admit to it when we succumb to our instincts.

Woe to us if we get our satisfaction from the food in the kitchen and the TV in the den and the sex in the bedroom with an occasional tribute to the cement blocks in the basement!

Long as I was riding in a big Cadillac and dressed nice and had plenty of food, that's all I cared about.

In our rich consumers' civilization we spin cocoons around ourselves and get possessed by our possessions.

Too many of us now tend to worship self indulgence and consumption.

The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.

I'm not an ascetic.

People have become shallower. They view spending, entertaining, seeking leisure and enjoying as the main objectives of their life.

We seem to live in an age where we are quietly appalled by the idea of appetites, whether they be for sex, food or diamonds.

Appetite is essentially insatiable, and where it operates as a criterion of both action and enjoyment (that is, everywhere in the Western world since the sixteenth century) it will infallibly discover congenial agencies (mechanical and political) of expression.

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

The very fact that we find it hard to conceive of an alternative to limitless economic growth is an indication of our spiritual condition.

Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.

We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property.

The production of goods had become an end in itself and the consumption of goods only the means to further production.

Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.

Materialism isn't the panacea that so many people think it is.

We live in such a self-gratifying nation, and everything is instantaneous.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close knit communities, and our faith in God , too many of us now tend to worship self indulgence and consumption .

To build enormous palaces, to conquer or to mimic nature, to ransack the world in order to gratify the passions of a man, is not thought of, but to add a few yards of land to your field, to plant an orchard, or enlarge a dwelling, to always be making life more comfortable and convenient, to avoid trouble, and to satisfy the smallest wants without effort and almost without cost. These are small objects, but the soul clings to them; it dwells upon them closely and day by day, till they at last shut out the rest of the world and sometimes intervene between itself and heaven.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves.

In The Ecology of Freedom, my critique of what is called civilization and industrial society is massive, and my attack upon [Karl] Marx's commitment to it as a necessary stage in human progress and the domination of nature is very sharp.