Quotes by Aldous Huxley

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”  

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.”

“Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.”

“The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.”

“If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.”

“I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.”

“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. "Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does." They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.”

“An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.”

“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.”

“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.”

“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”

“For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.”

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. 

Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. 

Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. 

Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. 

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. 

Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. 

When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. 

No rhetoric, no tremolos, 

no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell. 

And of course, no theology, no metaphysics. 

Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light. 

So throw away your baggage and go forward. 

There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, 

trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. 

That’s why you must walk so lightly. 

Lightly my darling, 

on tiptoes and no luggage, 

not even a sponge bag, 

completely unencumbered.”