Brave New World: (Original Classic Editions)

by Aldous Huxley

All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.'

'They'll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an "instinctive" hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned. They'll be safe from books and botany all their lives.'

Primroses and landscapes, he pointed out, have one grave defect: they are gratuitous. A love of nature keeps no factories busy.

'We condition the masses to hate the country,' concluded the Director. 'But simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports. At the same time, we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport. Hence those electric shocks.'

And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more,

in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable?

'Stability,' said the Controller, 'stability. No civilization without social stability. No social stability without individual stability.' His voice was a trumpet. Listening, they felt larger, warmer.

Would the creature treat him with the respect due to his caste? The question haunted him. Not without reason.

Speaking very slowly, 'Did you ever feel,' he asked, 'as though you had something inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that you aren't using--you know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines?' He looked at Bernard questioningly. 'You mean all the emotions one might be feeling if things were different?'

Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly--they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced. That's one of the things I try to teach my students--how to write piercingly.

'Because it is idiotic. Writing when there's nothing to say...'

'Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.'

'But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.'