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Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
(26 Jul 1894 - 22 Nov 1963)

English author of novels, essays and short stories. His best-known work is his prophetic Brave New World (1932). Huxley's later novels showed a developing interest in occult themes, such as The Devils of Loudon (1952). He was the grandson of zoologist Th

Science Quotes by Aldous (Leonard) Huxley (16)

A million million spermatozoa,
All of them alive:
Out of their cataclysm but one poor Noah
Dare hope to survive.
And among that billion minus one
Might have chanced to be Shakespeare, another Newton, a new Donne—
But the One was Me.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
'Fifth Philosopher's Song', Leda (1920),33.
See also:  |  John Donne (6)  |  Genetics (64)  |  Sir Isaac Newton (131)  |  William Shakespeare (20)  |  Sperm (3)

Even if I could be Shakespeare I think that I should still choose to be Faraday.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
In 1925, attributed. Walter M. Elsasser, Memoirs of a Physicist in the Atomic Age (1978), epigraph.
See also:  |  Biography (159)  |  Choice (6)  |  Michael Faraday (40)  |  William Shakespeare (20)

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
'On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge', a lay sermon at St. Martin's Hall (Sunday 7 Jan 1866), The Fortnightly Review. In The Journal of Mental Science (1867), Vol. 12, No. 58, (Jul 1866), 279.
See also:  |  Authority (7)  |  Knowledge (341)

Everything's incredible, if you can skin off the crust of obviousness our habits put on it.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Point Counter Point (1928), 407.
See also:  |  Habit (16)

Facts are ventriloquists' dummies. Sitting on a wise man's knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Spoken by the character Bruno Rontini in Time Must Have A Stop (1944), 301. In Carl C. Gaither, Statistically Speaking (1996), 98.
See also:  |  Fact (146)

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Proper Studies (1927, 1933), 205.
See also:  |  Fact (146)

I admit that mathematical science is a good thing. But excessive devotion to it is a bad thing.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Interview with J.W. N. Sullivan, Contemporary Mind (1934). In John De Pillis, 777 Mathematical Conversation Starters (2002), 198.
See also:  |  Bad (4)  |  Devotion (3)  |  Good (15)  |  Mathematics (226)  |  Science (463)

I admit that mathematical science is a good thing. But excessive devotion to it is a bad thing.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Interview with J. W. N. Sullivan. Quoted in James Roy Newman, The World of Mathematics (2000), 2027.

Procrustes in modern dress, the nuclear scientist will prepare the bed on which mankind must lie; and if mankind doesn't fit—well, that will be just too bad for mankind. There will have to be some stretching and a bit of amputation—the same so
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Brave New World (1932, 1998), Preface, xiii.

Science and art are only too often a superior kind of dope, possessing this advantage over booze and morphia: that they can be indulged in with a good conscience and with the conviction that, in the process of indulging, one is leading the 'higher life.'
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Ends and Means (1937), 320. In Collected Essays (1959), 369.
See also:  |  Advantage (6)  |  Conscience (7)  |  Conviction (5)  |  Indulge (4)  |  Science And Art (26)

Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Brave New World (1932, 1998), 225.
See also:  |  Dangerous (8)  |  Science (463)

Science is the reduction of the bewildering diversity of unique events to manageable uniformity within one of a number of symbol systems, and technology is the art of using these symbol systems so as to control and organize unique events. Scientific observation is always a viewing of things through the refracting medium of a symbol system, and technological praxis is always handling of things in ways that some symbol system has dictated. Education in science and technology is essentially education on the symbol level.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Essay in Daedalus (Spring1962), 279.
See also:  |  Education (124)  |  Event (20)  |  Science (463)  |  Symbol (13)

The ductless glands secrete among other things our moods, our aspirations, our philosophy of life.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
'And Wanton Optics Roil the Melting Eye', in Music at Night and Other Essays (1931), 26.
See also:  |  Aspiration (3)  |  Gland (3)  |  Mood (2)  |  Philosophy (77)

Unless we choose to decentralize and to use applied science, not as the end to which human beings are to be made the means, but as the means to producing a race of free individuals, we have only two alternatives to choose from: either a number of national
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Brave New World (1932, 1998), Preface, xvii.
See also:  |  Applied Science (11)  |  Techonology (3)  |  Utopia (3)  |  War (51)

We have learned that there is an endocrinology of elation and despair, a chemistry of mystical insight, and, in relation to the autonomic nervous system, a meteorology and even... an astro-physics of changing moods.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Literature and Science (1963), 90.
See also:  |  Astrophysics (6)  |  Chemistry (91)  |  Despair (6)  |  Insight (16)  |  Joy (9)  |  Meteorology (12)  |  Mood (2)  |  Mystery (29)  |  Nerve (32)

[The more science discovers and] the more comprehension it gives us of the mechanisms of existence, the more clearly does the mystery of existence itself stand out.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Julian Huxley and Aldous Huxley, Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963: A Memorial Volume (1965), 21.
See also:  |  Discovery (178)  |  Mystery (29)


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