Aldous Huxley Quotes

Nature has no reverence towards life. Nature treats life as though it were the most valueless thing in the world....

Evolution doesn't care about what makes sense; it cares about what works

Man, who preys both on the vegetable and animal species, is himself a prey to neither. He too possesses the reproductive principle far beyond the degree requisite for the bare continuance of his species. What becomes of the surplus of human life to which this principle is competent?

Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.

Nature is not here to keep you alive. It has just as many ways to kill you as it does to sustain you. And if you cherry-pick this fact, you are left thinking that earth is some haven for life, but 96, 97 percent of all species that ever lived on earth are now extinct from the actions of the earth itself and an occasional asteroid to stir the pot.

Human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.

Your soul doesn't care what you do for a living - and when your life is over, neither will you. Your soul cares only about what you are being while you are doing whatever you are doing.

The law is the survival of the fittest.... The law is not the survival of the 'better' or the 'stronger,' if we give to those words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival.

It is understood that nonhuman creatures adapt to their places or they don't live. And for some reason that I can't figure out, even the biologists have excused our own species from that obligation. I think there's going to be a biological penalty to be paid for that eventually.

Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life; ... 'So careful of the type', but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, 'A thousand types are gone: I care for nothing, all shall go' ... Man, her last work, who seemed so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law- Tho' Nature red in tooth and claw With ravine, shrieked against his creed.

No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity.

Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans.

Oh, the cares of men! how much emptiness there is in human concerns!

In nature we find not only that which is expedient, but also everything which is not so inexpedient as to endanger the existence of the species.

A human life the treasure of the world cannot buy; nor can it redeem one which is misspent; nor can it make full and complete and beautiful a life which is dwarfed and warped and ugly.

What good is money to you if you're going to die? It's not often that money can save someone's life.

Why does evolution matter? There is so much about the evolution of life, the development of life on Earth that should rivet the attention of everyone to understand where we've come from and where we might be going. We need to understand the world around us if we are to succeed as a species on the planet.

What is the vanity of the vainest man compared with the vanity which the most modest possesses when, in the midst of nature and the world, he feels himself to be man!

When we hear complaints of the wretchedness or vanity of human life, the proper answer to them would be that there is hardly any one who at some point or other has not been in love. If we consider the high abstraction of this feeling, its depth, its purity, its voluptuous refinement, even in the meanest breast, how sacred and how sweet it is, this alone may reconcile us to the lot of humanity. That drop of balm turns the bitter cup to a delicious nectar.

Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.

If I were to start taking care of my grooming, I would no longer be my own self.

Our vanity would have just that which we do best count as that which is hardest for us. The origin of many a morality.

We stand for global security and so we take care of everyone's life.

If I were to start taking care of my grooming, I would no longer be my own self... so the hell with it... I will continue to be unconcerned about it, which surely has the advantage that I'm left in peace by many a fop who would otherwise come to see me.

Nothing is so false as human life, nothing so treacherous. God knows no one would have accepted it as a gift, if it had not been given without our knowledge.