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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index H > Aldous (Leonard) Huxley Quotes

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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 (27 quotes)

“Facts speak for themselves.” Illusion! 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
In Time Must Have A Stop (1916), 295.
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[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.
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A bilious philosopher’s opinion of the world can only be accepted with a pinch of salt, of Epsom salt by preference.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
From essay in Proper Studies: The Proper Study of Mankind Is Man (1927). Extract published in Vanity Fair (1927), 28, No. 4, 100.
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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.
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Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
More Criticisms on Darwin, and Administrative Nihilism (1872), 26.
Science quotes on:  |  Truth (1109)

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.
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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.
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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.
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Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Proper Studies (1927, 1933), 205.
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Great scientific discoveries have been made by men seeking to verify quite erroneous theories about the nature of things.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
From 'Wordsworth in the Tropics', in Life and Letters and the London Mercury (1928), Vol. 1, 349.
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Guido was as much enchanted by the rudiments of algebra as he would have been if I had given him an engine worked by steam, with a methylated spirit lamp to heat the boiler; more enchanted, perhaps for the engine would have got broken, and, remaining always itself, would in any case have lost its charm, while the rudiments of algebra continued to grow and blossom in his mind with an unfailing luxuriance. Every day he made the discovery of something which seemed to him exquisitely beautiful; the new toy was inexhaustible in its potentialities.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
In Young Archimedes: And Other Stories (1924), 299. The fictional character, Guido, is a seven year old boy. Methylated spirit is an alcohol fuel.
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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). Quoted in James Roy Newman, The World of Mathematics (2000), 2027.
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If we evolved a race of Isaac Newtons, that would not be progress. For the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Interview with J.W.N. Sullivan, Contemporary Mind, London, 1934. As cited in James Roy Newman, The World of Mathematics (1956), Vol. 4, 2222.
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My father … considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
In Those Barren Leaves (1925, 1948), 13.
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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 sort of stretching and amputations as have been going on ever since applied science really got going into its stride, only this time they will be a good deal more drastic than in the past. These far from painless operations will be directed by highly centralized totalitarian governments.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Brave New World (1932, 1998), Preface, xiii.
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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.
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Science has “explained” nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Along the Road: Notes and Essays of a Tourist (1928), 108.
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Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Brave New World (1932, 1998), 225.
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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.
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Specialized meaninglessness has come to be regarded, in certain circles, as a kind of hallmark of true science.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
…...
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Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
In Ends and Means: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Ideals and Into Methods (1937), 9.
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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.
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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.
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We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Ends and Means: an Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals and into Methods Employed for their Realization (1937), 310.
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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.
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Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly—they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
In Brave New World (1932, 1950), 58.
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You know the formula m over naught equals infinity, m being any positive number? [m/0 = ∞]. Well, why not reduce the equation to a simpler form by multiplying both sides by naught? In which case you have m equals infinity times naught [m = ∞ × 0]. That is to say, a positive number is the product of zero and infinity. Doesn't that demonstrate the creation of the Universe by an infinite power out of nothing? Doesn't it?
— Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
In Point Counter Point (1928), 162.
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Quotes by others about Aldous (Leonard) Huxley (1)

[I] browsed far outside science in my reading and attended public lectures - Bertrand Russell, H. G. Wells, Huxley, and Shaw being my favorite speakers. (The last, in a meeting at King's College, converted me to vegetarianism - for most of two years!).
Autobiography collected in Gardner Lindzey (ed.), A History of Psychology in Autobiography (1973), Vol. 6, 64.
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Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
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