Aldous Huxley Quotes

It's insanely difficult for people to accept the extent to which we are biological organisms without agency.

Freedom was conditioned by man's physical body, heredity, and environment.

The heart of man will always be dark. There will always be evil people. The problem is that there is nothing we can humanly do to change them.

Biology always beats will power.

Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything except his own nature.

The problem here is with a human being, not with a monster, not with an animal. The human being does things that even the monster does not do, because the human is more sophisticated.

We have to accept that we are just machines. That's certainly what modern molecular biology says about us.

Man's biological weakness is the condition of human culture.

Human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate.

Allah, the Exalted, gave the angels intellect without desires, He gave the animals desires without intellect, and He gave both to the sons of Adam. So a man whose intellect prevails over his desires is better than the angels, whilst a man whose desire prevails over his intellect is worse than the animals.

The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow.

Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.

No man's body is as strong as his appetites, but Heaven has corrected the boundlessness of his voluptuous desires by stinting his strength and contracting his capacities.

I think, at the end of the day, the real antagonist is the brokenness of humanity.

MAN IS FUNDAMENTALLY AN ANIMAL. Animals, as distinct from man, are not machine-like, not sadistic; their societies, within the same species, are incomparably more peaceful than those of man. The basic question, then is: What has made the animal, man, degenerate into a machine?

Evil is not any superhuman, but it is HUMAN.

Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.

You can't blame me. I mean that literally. You're incapable of blaming me. You're human. Being human is choosing freedom over imprisonment, autonomy over dependency, liberty over servitude. You can't blame me because you know (come on, man, you've always known) that the idea of spending eternity with nothing to do except praise God is utterly unappealing. You'd be catatonic after an hour. Heaven's a swiz because to get in you have to leave yourself outside. You can't blame me because -- now do please be honest with yourself for once -- you'd have left, too.

And I realize that the decision to be human is not one single instant, but is a thousand choices made very day. It is choices we make every second and requires constant vigilance. We have to fight to remain human.

I don't think human beings are bad. They're weak. And that's what makes 'em bad.

Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision-making which replace the principles of instincts.

As free human beings we can use our unique intelligence to try to understand ourselves and our world. But if we are prevented from using our creative potential, we are deprived of one of the basic characteristics of a human being.

What if evil doesn't really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?

Society is composed of men, and every man is a FREE agent. Since man is free, he can choose; since he can choose, he can err; since he can err, he can suffer. I go further: He must err and he must suffer; for his starting point is ignorance, and in his ignorance he sees before him an infinite number of unknown roads, all of which save one lead to error.