208 quotes
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,” said Jefferson, “it expects what never was and never will be.”
Brave New World Revisited (1958)
Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unshown marble of great sculpture.
Point Counter Point (1928)
One unscrupulous distortion of the truth tends to beget other and opposite distortions.
Ends and Means (1937)
Who is going to educate the human race in the principles and practice of conservation?
Brave New World Revisited (1958)
But a priest's life is not supposed to be well-rounded; it is supposed to be one-pointed — a compass, not a weathercock.
The Devils of Loudon (1951)
Our vanity makes us exaggerate the importance of human life; the individual is nothing; Nature cares only for the species.
Point Counter Point (1928)
To talk about religion except in terms of human psychology is an irrelevance.
Do What You Will (1928)
To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
In Reader's Digest (1934)
Everybody strains after happiness, and the result is that nobody's happy.
Point Counter Point (1928)
All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant.
Crome Yellow (1921)
Certain memories, certain trains of thought are like the aching tooth one must always be touching just to make sure it still hurts.
Eyeless in Gaza (1936)
For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.
Music at Night and Other Essays (1931)
The end cannot justify the means for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.
Ends and Means (1937)
Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain.
Crome Yellow (1921)
The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information.
Brave New World Revisited (1958)
An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.
Brave New World Revisited (1958)
Several excuses are always less convincing than one.
Point Counter Point (1928)
It is a political axiom that power follows property.
Brave New World Revisited (1958)
An irrelevance, and your life’s altered.
Point Counter Point (1928)
We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.
The Doors of Perception (1954)