Fragile Butterflywings > Fragile's Quotes

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

“We're all human, aren't we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
― Mark Twain

“A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.”
― Albert Einstein

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
― Albert Einstein

“Never memorize something that you can look up.”
― Albert Einstein

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
― Aldous Huxley, Complete Essays, Vol. II: 1926-1929

“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations 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.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”
― Aldous Huxley, Collected Essays

“Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.”
― Aldous Huxley

“No social stability without individual stability.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“...most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol."
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"There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality."
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"But they used to take morphia and cocaine."
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"Two thousand pharmacologists and biochemists were subsidized in A.F. 178."
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"Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug."
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"Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant."
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"All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects."
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"Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology."
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"Stability was practically assured.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Isn't there something in living dangerously?'

There's a great deal in it,' the Controller replied. 'Men and women must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time.'

What?' questioned the Savage, uncomprehending.

It's one of the conditions of perfect health. That's why we've made the V.P.S. treatments compulsory.'

V.P.S.?'

Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenin. It's the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconvenience.'

But I like the inconveniences.'

We don't,' said the Controller. 'We prefer to do things comfortably.'

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.'

In fact,' said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy. Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer, the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.' There was a long silence.

I claim them all,' said the Savage at last.

Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. 'You're welcome,' he said.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue — liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg- eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
― Albert Einstein

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.”
― Henry Ford

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”
― Daphne Rae, Love Until It Hurts: The Work of Mother Teresa and Her Missionaries of Charity

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.”
― Mae West

“What's meant to be will always find a way”
― Trisha Yearwood

“Becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.”
― Veronica Roth, Divergent

“Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World