Aldous Huxley citáty

strana 7

„Zkušenost není to, co se vám stane. Zkušenost je to, jak naložíte s tím, co se vám stalo.“

„Technologický pokrok nám pouze poskytl účinnější prostředky pro couvání zpět.“

„Já jsem já a přál bych si, aby to tak nebylo.“

„Cudnost - nejhorší sexuální perverze.“

„Lékařský výzkum dosáhl takových pokroků, že koneckonců už na světě není zdravého člověka.“

„Hodní a spořádaní lidé nemají ani potuchy o tom, jaký je svět ve skutečnosti.“

„Ty skutečně beznadějné oběti duševní nemoci najdete mezi těmi, kdo se jeví jako nejnormálnější. Mnozí z nich jsou normální proto, že se natolik dobře přizpůsobili našemu způsobu existence a jejich lidský hlas byl tak záhy po vstupu na svět umlčen, že už ani nebojují, netrpí ani nemají symptomy neurotika. Jsou normální nikoli v tom, co lze považovat za absolutní význam toho slova; jsou normální pouze ve vztahu k těžce nenormální společnosti. Jejich dokonalé přizpůsobení se této nenormální společnosti je měřítkem jejich duševní choroby. Milióny abnormálně normálních lidí, žijících bezstarostně ve společnosti, které by – pokud by to byly plně lidské bytosti – nikdy neměli být přizpůsobeni.“

„Poznáš pravdu a z pravdy zešílíš.“

„Lékařská věda dosáhla takového pokroku, že nikdo na světě už není zdráv.“

„Úplně nemystický svět by byl světem zcela slepým a šíleným.“

„Věřím, že průběhu další generace světoví vůdci objeví, že narko-hypnotické podmiňování jsou více efektivní, než nástroje moci, než obušky a věznice a bažení po moci může být zcela uspokojena přiměním lidí k milování vlastního služebnictví, stejně jako je zbičovat a dokopat je k poslušnosti.“

„Skutečnost, že se lidé nikdy příliš nepoučili z lekcí historie, je tou nejdůležitější lekcí, kterou nás historie učí.“

„Jsme v procesu vyvíjení celé série technik, které umožní řídící oligarchii, aby přiměly lidi milovat svoje služebnictví.“

„Pro svého psa je každý člověk Napoleonem. Odtud ta stálá obliba psů.“

„Člověk není líný vůči tomu, co miluje.“

„Dokonalá diktatura bude vypadat jako demokracie, ale v podstatě to bude vězení beze zdí, odkud by vězně ani nenapadlo utíkat. Bude to vlastně systém otroctví, v němž budou otroci, díky konzumu a zábavě, své nevolnictví milovat.“

„Ale já nechci pohodlí. Chci Boha, chci poezii, chci skutečné nebezpečí, chci svobodu, chci to, co je dobré, a chci hřích.“
„Zkrátka,“ pravil Mustafa Mond, „požadujete právo být nešťastný.“
„Tak tedy ano,“ pravil divoch vzdorně, „požaduji právo být nešťastný.“

„Tajemstvím geniality je přivést ducha dítěte do stáří, což znamená, že nikdy neztratíte své nadšení.“

„Fakta nepřestanou existovat jenom proto, že je nebereme na vědomí.“

„Intelektuál je člověk, který objevil, že poznání je zajímavější než sex.“

„Štěstí vzniká jen coby vedlejší produkt - stejně jako koks.“

„Mlčení je plno potencionální moudrosti a vtipu - jako dosud neotesaný mramor slavné sochy.“

„Chci vědět, co je vášeň. Chci něco silně cítit.“

„Dřív jsme chodili, dnes sedíme. Životní síla, která si hledala výpusť prostřednictvím napnutých svalů, se teď vrací do útrob a nervů a pomalu je stravuje.“

„Můžeš říct něco o ničem?“

„Věcí vlády je zasedat, nikoli mlátit. Vládne se hlavou a zadkem, nikoli pěstí.“

„Ženy jsou vždy obdivuhodně stejné, jen svými tvary se poněkud liší - toť vše.“

„Autorem obou eposů je buď Homér, nebo ne-li Homér, tedy někdo jiný téhož jména.“

„Většina králů a kněží byla despotická a všechna náboženství byla spletena pověrami.“

„Zkušenost učí pouze učitelné...“

„V této chvíli se ocitneme před velmi znepokojivou otázkou: Opravdu chceme jednat podle našich znalostí?“

„Nepostradatelná není nutně žádoucí.“

„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.“

„Ó ty nový krásný světe,“ opakoval. „Ó ty nový krásný světe, který takové máš obyvatele! Poleťme hned.“
„Někdy se vskutku vyjadřujete neobyčejně divně,“ pravil Bernard a díval se upřeně na mladíka ve zmateném údivu. „A vůbec, neměl byste raději počkat, až ten nový svět opravdu uvidíte?“

„Skvělá je pravda, ale lepší je z praktického hlediska, pomlčení o pravdě.“

„Lékařská věda udělala takové pokroky, že na světě teď již vskutku není zdravého člověka.“

“Out psychological experiences are all equally facts.”

“These effects of mescalin are the sort of effects you could expect to follow the administration of a drug having the power to impair the efficiency of the cerebral reducing valve. When the brain runs out of sugar, the undernourished ego grows weak, can't be bothered to undertake the necessary chores, and loses all interest in those spatial and temporal relationships which mean so much to an organism bent on getting on in the world. As Mind at Large seeps past the no longer watertight valve, all kinds of biologically useless things start to happen. … Other persons discover a world of visionary beauty. To others again is revealed the glory, the infinite value and meaningfulness of naked existence, of the given, unconceptualized event.”

“The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many be corrupted.”

“There has been a general trend in recent times toward a Unitarian mythology and the worship of one God. This is the tendency which it is customary to regard as spiritual progress. On what grounds? Chiefly, so far as one can see, because we in the Twentieth Century West are officially the worshippers of a single divinity. A movement whose consummation is Us must be progressive. Quod erat demonstrandum.”

“It had been, when I read it, only a vaguely pregnant piece of nonsense. Now it was all as clear as day, as evident as Euclid. Of course the Dharma-Body of the Buddha was the hedge at the bottom of the garden. At the same time, and no less obviously, it was these flowers, it was anything that I—or rather the blessed Not-I, released for a moment from my throttling embrace—cared to look at.”

“There was a time when I should have felt terribly ashamed of not being up-to-date. I lived in a chronic apprehension lest I might, so to speak, miss the last bus, and so find myself stranded and benighted, in a desert of demodedness, while others, more nimble than myself, had already climbed on board, taken their tickets and set out toward those bright but, alas, ever receding goals of Modernity and Sophistication. Now, however, I have grown shameless, I have lost my fears. I can watch unmoved the departure of the last social-cultural bus—the innumerable last buses, which are starting at every instant in all the world’s capitals. I make no effort to board them, and when the noise of each departure has died down, “Thank goodness!” is what I say to myself in the solitude. I find nowadays that I simply don’t want to be up-to-date. I have lost all desire to see and do the things, the seeing and doing of which entitle a man to regard himself as superiorly knowing, sophisticated, unprovincial; I have lost all desire to frequent the places and people that a man simply must frequent, if he is not to be regarded as a poor creature hopelessly out of the swim. “Be up-to-date!” is the categorical imperative of those who scramble for the last bus. But it is an imperative whose cogency I refuse to admit. When it is a question of doing something which I regard as a duty I am as ready as anyone else to put up with discomfort. But being up-to-date and in the swim has ceased, so far as I am concerned, to be a duty. Why should I have my feelings outraged, why should I submit to being bored and disgusted for the sake of somebody else’s categorical imperative? Why? There is no reason. So I simply avoid most of the manifestations of that so-called “life” which my contemporaries seem to be so unaccountably anxious to “see”; I keep out of range of the “art” they think is so vitally necessary to “keep up with”; I flee from those “good times” in the “having” of which they are prepared to spend so lavishly of their energy and cash.”

“To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.”

“Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very beginning that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and in the country around it. Rub it in.”

“My sympathies are, of course, with the Government side, especially the Anarchists; for Anarchism seems to me more likely to lead to desirable social change than highly centralized, dictatorial Communism.”

“To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large — this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual.”

“Half of the human race lives in manifest obedience to the lunar rhythm; and there is evidence to show that the psychological and therefore the spiritual life, not only of women, but of men too, mysteriously ebbs and flows with the changes of the moon. There are unreasoned joys, inexplicable miseries, laughters and remorses without a cause. Their sudden and fantastic alternations constitute the ordinary weather of our minds. These moods, of which the more gravely numinous may be hypostasized as gods, the lighter, if we will, as hobgoblins and fairies, are the children of the blood and humours. But the blood and humours obey, among many other masters, the changing moon. Touching the soul directly through the eyes and, indirectly, along the dark channels of the blood, the moon is doubly a divinity.”

“To the gross senses the chair seems solid and substantial. But the gross senses and be refined by means of instruments. Closer observations are made, as the result of which we are forced to conclude that the chair is “really” a swarm of electric charges whizzing about in empty space. … While the substantial chair is an abstraction easily made from the memories of innumerable sensations of sight and touch, the electric charge chair is a difficult and far-fetched abstraction from certain visual sensations so excessively rare (they can only come to us in the course of elaborate experiments) that not one man in a million has ever been in the position to make it for himself. The overwhelming majority of us accept the electric-charge chair on authority, as good Catholics accept transubstantiation.”

“The modern world is still suffering from the native incapacity of the Jews to be political. The art of making and preserving a City, which we call be the Greek name, “Politics,” was never an indigenous growth among the Hebrews. The City of the Greeks and the other civilized nations of antiquity was hateful to them. Their ideas were essentially anti-political. The politics of Judaea, when there were any, were borrowed from the Egyptians and Babylonians and, later, from the Greeks. These borrowings were regarded with violent disapproval by the champions of Hebrew orthodoxy, who objected to organized civilization on two grounds. Some, like Amos, hated it just because it was civilization and not nomadic barbarism. It was in the desert that God had made his covenant with the Chosen Race, and in the desert there was nothing else to think about but God. So, Back to the Desert! was their war-cry. Others, the Ebionites, objected to civilization because it was hierarchical, because it made for social inequality. They gave prophetically indignant utterance to the envious hatred of the poor in cash and in spirit against the rich and talented and cultured. A pious and universal mediocrity was their ideal.”

“Sleep teaching was actually prohibited in England. There was something called liberalism. Parliament, if you know what that was, passed a law against it. The records survive. Speeches about liberty of the subject. Liberty to be inefficient and miserable. Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole.”

“Words are good servants but bad masters.”

“Well, I'd rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here.”

“Most kings and priests have been despotic, and all religions have been riddled with superstition.”

“One right-thinking man thinks like all other right-thinking men of his time—that is to say, in most cases, like some wrong-thinking man of another time.”

“I was sitting on the seashore, half listening to a friend arguing violently about something which merely bored me. Unconsciously to myself, I looked at a film, of sand I had picked up on my hand, when I suddenly saw the exquisite beauty of every little grain of it; instead of being dull, I saw that each particle was made up on a perfect geometrical pattern, with sharp angles, from each of which a brilliant shaft of light was reflected, while each tiny crystal shone like a rainbow.... The rays crossed and recrossed, making exquisite patterns of such beauty that they left me breathless. … Then, suddenly, my consciousness was lighted up from within and I saw in a vivid way how the whole universe was made up of particles of material which, no matter how dull and lifeless they might seem, were nevertheless filled with this intense and vital beauty. For a second or two the whole world appeared as a blaze of glory. When it died down, it left me with something I have never forgotten and which constantly reminds me of the beauty locked up in every minute speck of material around us.”

“It is a political axiom that power follows property.”

“The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of "Spiritualism" is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a séance.”

“It is only when it takes the form of physical addiction that sex is evil. It is also evil when it manifests itself as a way of satisfying the lust for power or the climber's craving for position and social distinction.”

“In recent years, many men of science have come to realize that the scientific picture of the world is a partial one — the product of their special competence in mathematics and their special incompetence to deal systematically with aesthetic and moral values, religous experiences and intuitions of significance. Unhappily, novel ideas become acceptable to the less intelligent members of society only with a very considerable time-lag. Sixty or seventy years ago the majority of scientists believed — and the belief caused them considerable distress — that the product of their special incompetence was identical with reality as a whole. Today this belief has begun to give way, in scientific circles, to a different and obviously truer conception of the relation between science and total experience.”

“All war propaganda consists, in the last resort, in substituting diabolical abstractions for human beings. Similarly, those who defend war have invented a pleasant sounding vocabulary of abstractions in which to describe the process of mass murder.”

“The effectiveness of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods employed, not upon the doctrines taught. These doctrines may be true or false, wholesome or pernicious—it makes little or no difference.”

“Confronted, when the weather is fine and I am in propitious emotional circumstances, with certain landscapes, certain works of art, certain human beings, I know, for the time being, that God's in his heaven and all's right with the world. On other occasions, skies and destiny being inclement, I am no less immediately certain of the malignant impersonality of an uncaring universe. Every human being has had similar experiences. This being so, the sensible thing to do would be to accept the facts and frame a metaphysic to fit them. But with that talent for doing the wrong thing, that genius for perversity, so characteristically human, men have preferred, especially in recent times, to take another course. They have either denied the existence of these psychological facts; or if they have admitted them, have done so only to condemn as evil all such experiences as cannot be reconciled in a logical system with whatever particular class of experiences they have chosen, arbitrarily, to regard as "true" and morally valuable. Every man tries to pretend that he is consistently one kind of person and does his best consistently to worship one kind of God. And this despite the fact that he experiences diversity and actually feels himself in contact with a variety of divinities.”

“I was looking at my furniture, not as the utilitarian who has to sit on chairs, to write at desks and tables, and not as the cameraman or scientific recorder, but as the pure aesthete whose concern is only with forms and their relationships within the field of vision or the picture space. But as I looked, this purely aesthetic, Cubist's-eye view gave place to what I can only describe as the sacramental vision of reality. I was back where I had been when I was looking at the flowers—back in a world where everything shone with the Inner Light, and was infinite in its significance.”

“Who is going to educate the human race in the principles and practice of conservation?”

“To talk about religion except in terms of human psychology is an irrelevance.”