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Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east.
Sep 17, 2025
It isn’t only art that is incompatible with happiness, it’s also science. Science is dangerous, we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.
Sixty two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth. Idiots!
The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg- eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.
They're old; they're about God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now" "But God doesn't change" "Men do though
Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people's happiness.
What is too much? There is no such thing!
The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men.
Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
Happiness has got to be paid for. You're paying for it, Mr. Watson–paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too.
God in the safe and Ford on the shelves.
We can't allow science to undo its own good work.
Value dwells not in particular will; It holds his estimate and dignity As well wherein 'tis precious of itself As in the prizer.
A love of nature keeps no factories busy.
We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability.
When the individual feels, the community reels.
What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.
But every one belongs to every one else
Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery.
Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.
The more stitches, the less riches.
Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning, truth and beauty can't.
The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray.
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.
We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters.
No social stability without individual stability.
All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny.
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.
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.
Those who feel themselves despised do well to look despising.
God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.
One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.
I'd rather be myself," he said. "Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.
You all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk.
"But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.
Hug me till you drug me, honey; Kiss me till I'm in a coma.
All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.
You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases.
If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.
All our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook.
I like being myself. Myself and nasty.
O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!
Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the flood is passion, the flood is even madness.
Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly color. I'm so glad I'm a Beta.
You can't make flivers without steel - and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they pratically can't help behaving as they ought to behave.
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.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?
To take arms against a sea of troubles.
And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past, you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that's what soma is.