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Brave New World , by Aldous Huxley, is about a dystopian future world. In this world, people value pleasure more than freedom and individuality.

They have limited intellectual pursuits. And people are limited to their planned roles.

But some people are unhappy and question this new world.

Will the brave new world learn the error of its ways? Or will they remain slaves to their empty pleasures?

Table of Contents

Brave New World Quotes With Page Numbers Chapter 1

“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, Character: The Director, Chapter 1, Page 10

“That is the secret of happiness and virtue — liking what you’ve got to do.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Director, Chapter 1, Page 10  

Quotes From Brave New World With Page Numbers Chapter 2

“A love of nature keeps no factories busy.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Charater: The Narrator, Chapter 2, Page 14

Brave New World Quotes With Page Numbers Chapter 3

“Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder those poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty—they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable?” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Narrator, Chapter 3, Page 27

“No social stability without individual stability.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Mustapha Mond, Chapter 3, Page 28

“Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the flood is passion, the flood is even madness: it depends on the force of the current, the height and strength of the barrier. The unchecked stream flows smoothly down its appointed channels into a calm well being.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Narrator, Chapter 3, Page 29

“Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Propagando repeated by a voice, Chapter 3, Page 33

“Ending is better than mending.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Propagando repeated by a voice, Chapter 3, Pages 33, 35

“There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.” … “There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality.” … “But they used to take morphia and cocaine.” … “Two thousand pharmacologists and biochemists were subsidized in A.F. 178.” … “Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug.” … “Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant.” … “All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.” … “Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology.” … “Stability was practically assured.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Propagando repeated by a voice, Chapter 3, Pages 35, 36

Brave New World Quotes And Page Numbers Chapter 4

“Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Narrator, Chapter 4, Page 42

“I am I, and I wish I weren’t.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Bernard, Chapter 4, Page 43

“Did you ever feel…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?” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Helmholtz Watson, Chapter 4, Page 46

“I’m pretty good at inventing phrases- you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though you’d sat on a pin, they seem so new and exciting even though they’re about something hypnopaedically obvious. But that doesn’t seem enough. It’s not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too…I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say? And how can one be violent about the sort of things one’s expected to write about? Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly-they’ll go through anything. You read them and you’re pierced. That’s one of the things I try to teach my students-how to write piercingly. But what on earth’s the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words really piercing-you know, like the very hardest X-rays when you’re writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing?” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Helmholtz Watson and Bernard Marx, Chapter 4, Page 46

“A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Narrator, Chapter 4, Page 46

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, (Character: Helmholtz Watson), Chapter 4, Page 47

“When people are suspicious with you, you start being suspicious with them.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Bernard Marx, Chapter 4, Page 47

“Can you say something about nothing?” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Helmholtz Watson, Chapter 4, Page 47

Brave New World Quotes With Page Numbers Chapter 5

“To be excited is still to be unsatisfied.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Fifi Bradlaugh, Chapter 5, Page 57

Brave New World Quotes With Page Numbers Chapter 6

“I’d rather be myself,” he said. “Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Bermard Marx, Chapter 6, Page 59

“I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Bernard Marx, Chapter 6, Page 62

“Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Lenina, Chapter 6, Page 62

Brave New World Quotes With Page Numbers Chapter 8

“A man can smile and smile and be a villain.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Narrator about John, Chapter 8, Page 89

“If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: John, Chapter 8, Page 92

Brave New World Quotes With Page Numbers Chapter 9

“O brave new world that has such people in it.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: John, Chapter 9, Pages 94, and 107

Brave New World Quotes With Page Numbers Chapter 12

“It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose— well, you didn’t know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes—make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Mustapha Mond, Chapter 12, Page 119

“Well, I’d rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Savage, Chapter 12, Page 120

“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.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Narrator, Chapter 12, Page 121

Brave New World Quotes With Page Numbers Chapter 14

“I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms for example…” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Helmholtz Watson, Chapter 14, Page 136

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Mustapha Mond, Chapter 14, Page 139

Brave New World Quotes With Page Numbers Chapter 16

“We don’t want to change. Every change is a menace to stability.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Mustapha Mond, Chapter 16, Page 153

“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.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Mustapha Mond, Chapter 16, Page 153

“Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning, truth and beauty can’t.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Mustapha Mond, Chapter 16, Page 155

“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.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Mustapha Mond, Chapter 16, Page 155

“What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you?” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Mustapha Mond, Chapter 16, Page 155

Brave New World Quotes With Page Numbers Chapter 17

“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.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Savage reading from a book, Chapter 17, Page 157

“They’re old; they’re about God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now” “But God doesn’t change” “Men do though” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Savage and Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, Page 157

“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. We are God’s property. Is it not our happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and prosperous. These may think it a great thing to have everything, as they suppose, their own way–to depend on no one–to have to think of nothing out of sight, to be without the irksomeness of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer, continual reference of what they do to the will of another. But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man–that it is an unnatural state–will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end …'” Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. “Take this, for example,” he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: “‘A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false–a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.'” Mustapha Mond shut the book and leaned back in his chair. “One of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn’t dream about was this” (he waved his hand), “us, the modern world. ‘You can only be independent of God while you’ve got youth and prosperity; independence won’t take you safely to the end.’ Well, we’ve now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. ‘The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.’ But there aren’t any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Characters: The Savage and Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, Page 157-59

“The Savage interrupted him. “But isn’t it natural to feel there’s a God?” “You might as well ask if it’s natural to do up one’s trousers with zippers,” said the Controller sarcastically. “You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons–that’s philosophy. People believe in God because they’ve been conditioned to believe in God.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Characters: The Savage and Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, Page 159

“God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make a choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Mustapha Mond to the Savage, Chapter 17, Page 159

“It is natural to believe in God when you’re alone– quite alone, in the night, thinking about death.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Savage, Chapter 17, Pages 159, 160

“The Savage nodded, frowning. “You got rid of them. Yes, that’s just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether ’tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows or outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them…But you don’t do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It’s too easy.” …”What you need,” the Savage went on, “is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Savage, Chapter 17, Page 160

“In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise. When there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended – there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. But there aren’t any wars nowadays. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving anyone too much. There’s no such thing as a divided allegiance; you’re so conditioned that you can’t help doing what you ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really aren’t any temptations to resist. And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. 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 mortality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears – that’s what soma is.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, Pages 161, 162

“I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Savage, Chapter 17, Page 163

“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.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Savage, Chapter 17, Page 163

“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.’ ‘All right then,’ said the Savage defiantly, ‘I’m 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, Characters: The Savage and Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, Page 163

“All right then,” said the savage defiantly, I’m 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.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Characters: The Savage and Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, Page 163

“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, Characters: The Savage and Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, Page 163

Brave New World Quotes With Page Numbers Chapter 18

“I ate civilization…It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then,” he added in a lower tone, “I ate my own wickedness.” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Savage, Chapter 18, Page 164

“Pain was a fascinating horror” ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Narrator, Chapter 18, Page 176

“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. . . ~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Character: The Narrator about the Savage, Chapter 18, Page 177

Brave New World Animated Summary

Brave new world short summary .

Published in 1932, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a classic dystopian novel that follows the story of John, the Savage, an outsider who challenges the utopian society’s values and beliefs. As a result, he is forced to bear the consequences of his actions.

This futuristic society is structured according to predetermined social classes, and human emotions like love and family bonds have been replaced by technology.

The book warns society of the dangers of giving up the freedom of choice in exchange for a controlled and comfortable lifestyle. It delves into the consequences of a world where individual choice is sacrificed for progress and conformity.

Its powerful commentary on the dark side of technology and social engineering still resonates today. Brave New World is an insightful and thought-provoking read that will stay with readers long after finishing it.

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We have all of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World quotes with page numbers and themes so you can understand this weird society through the characters' eyes.

Introduction See All

Summary see all.

• Chapter 4: Part 1
• Chapter 4: Part 2
• Chapter 5: Part 1
• Chapter 5: Part 2
• Chapter 6: Part 1
• Chapter 6: Part 2
• Chapter 6: Part 3

Themes See All

Literature and writing, freedom and confinement, drugs and alcohol, spirituality, society and class, dissatisfaction, characters see all.

• John the Savage
• Bernard Marx
• Helmholtz Watson
• Mustapha Mond
• Lenina Crowne
• The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
• Henry Foster
• Fanny Crowne

Analysis See All

• What's Up With the Title?
• What's Up With the Epigraph?
• Writing Style
• Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
• Narrator Point of View
• Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis
• Plot Analysis
• Three Act Plot Analysis

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Brave New World Quotes

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Brave New World

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Aldous Huxley

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• Character Analysis
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• John the Savage
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Summary and Analysis Chapter 2

The D.H.C. continues his tour of the Centre in the Infant Nursery. Here he lectures the new students on the importance of social conditioning as " moral  education."

The D.H.C. oversees a demonstration of "Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning." Nurses expose a group of babies to books and flowers and then add a violent explosion, alarm bells, shrieking sirens, and finally an electric shock. This experience, notes the D.H.C., will "unalterably" condition the reflexes of the babies so that they will develop an "instinctive hatred" of books and nature.

According to the D.H.C., such social conditioning ultimately maximizes economic consumption among the population. To illustrate his point, he explains how a dislike of nature can be transformed into a love of country sports — and that involves the consumption of a nearly endless variety of manufactured consumer goods.

The D.H.C. also recounts an anecdote about little Reuben Rabinovitch to discuss "sleep-teaching or hypnopaedia" — the "greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time." By way of an example, the D.H.C. and students look in on a sleep-teaching session on Elementary Class Consciousness.

In this chapter, Huxley continues his presentation of dystopian social stability with a close look at the theory and practice of early conditioning. In the explanation of hypnopaedia and infantile conditioning, Huxley makes clear that the elimination of choice increases economic and social stability but diminishes the potential for human growth.

The price of stability emerges most memorably in the scene in which Delta children — predestined for rote factory work — receive their conditioning to dislike the books and flowers. The image of happy babies crawling toward colorful books and beautiful blooms is filled with conventional sentimentality, but Huxley's reversal with the alarms and electric shock sharpens the reader's response. The reality of the conditioning represents its own legitimate argument against the theory of social, political, and economic stability. Note again Huxley's use of natural imagery as the complement to technology, when the sun beams warmly on the flowers, almost as if offering aid in the conditioning.

Less violent, but nonetheless powerful, hypnopaedia emerges as the source of underlying assumptions and prejudices in the dystopia. The lesson in class consciousness gives each child a social identity but cuts off the possibility of forming friendships outside of caste or even forming opinions of one's own. Throughout the novel, characters spout the sentiments of their hynopaedic training almost unconsciously and behave according to the precepts of the sleep-teaching. Even those — like Bernard Marx — who are conscious of the techniques of hypnopaedia cannot fully escape its power. Again, the dystopian practice supports social stability but destroys personal identity and independence.

The power of words — and responses to particular words — form an important theme in Brave New World . Hypnopaedia, Huxley makes clear, uses words at the vulnerable time during sleep to produce unquestioning loyalty or aversion in people. The World State, in effect, whispers into the ear of each of its sleeping young citizens to ensure compliance with the social order. Banned words — especially "mother" — produce a strong response of revulsion and shame, the effect of the carefully taught aversion to human reproduction.

Huxley draws the reader's attention to this fact in a comic turn that forms a memorable part of the students' discussion with the D.H.C. Shocked by the D.H.C.'s frank use of the words "mother" and "father," the students blush and then grin, while Huxley expresses their reactions by substituting the offending words with "crash." As the chapter emphasizes, then, the state's use of language plays an important role in shaping people's consciousness and manipulating their energies toward particular social and economic goals.

Note the change in symbols from the pre-Fordian world. The D.H.C. makes the sign of the T (as opposed to the cross), which the students repeat, in reverence to Henry Ford's Model T automobile, the product of the assembly line. The practiced piety recalls an earlier age, but the meaning of the gesture has changed. The World State has appropriated the Christian symbol and turned it into the Fordian T — significantly by cutting off the top of the cross. Even the symbols of the dystopia make clear the diminishing possibilities for humanity.

Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning Huxley's term for the dystopian form of infant training. The term derives from the classical conditioning system named for the Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1931).

viscose a substance used in making rayon thread and fabric.

Model-T the first car produced on Henry Ford's assembly line.

hypnopaedia sleep-teaching.

asafoetida a bad-smelling gum resin. It was formerly used to treat some illnesses, or, in folk medicine, to repel disease.

viviparous bearing or bringing forth living young, as most mammals and some other animals do.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British dramatist and critic. Here, one of Huxley's most famous contemporaries, whom he sarcastically singles out for particular mention as an accepted genius of the dystopia.

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Brave New World Quotes

Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.

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.

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.

If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.

I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons—that’s philosophy. People believe in God because they’ve been conditioned to believe in God.

Kiss me till I'm in a coma. Hug me, honey, snuggly.

If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely.

I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defined. And then, I ate my own wickedness.

that is the secret of happiness and virtue—liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their un-escapable social destiny.

Was and will make me ill, I take a gramme and only am. 

We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability. That's another reason why we're so chary of applying new inventions.

Success went fizzily to Bernard’s head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory.

Bernard was duly grateful (it was an enormous comfort to have his friend again) and also duly resentful (it would be pleasure to take some revenge on Helmholtz for his generosity).

Christianity without tears—that’s what soma is.

If you’re a human being, you’ll be seeing something of both, because we’ve always wanted things both ways.

You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.

The students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statement which upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made them accept, not merely as true, but as axiomatic, self-evident, utterly indisputable.

How can you talk about not wanting to be a part of the social body? We can't do without anyone!

the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.

From the ranks of the crawling babies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles and twitterings of pleasure.

Never put off till to-morrow the fun you can have today,

The machine turns, turns and must keep on turning—for ever. It is death if it stands still. A thousand millions scrabbled the crust of the earth. The wheels began to turn. In a hundred and fifty years there were two thousand millions. Stop all the wheels. In a hundred and fifty weeks there are once more only a thousand millions; a thousand thousand thousand men and women have starved to death.

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. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead.

Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.

He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.

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

But all the same, insisted the Savage, it is natural to believe in God when you’re alone—quite alone, in the night, thinking about death … But people never are alone now, said Mustapha Mond. We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it’s almost impossible for them ever to have it.

But God doesn’t change. Men do, though. What difference does that make? All the difference in the world,

Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended—there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. But there aren’t any wars nowadays.

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 practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave.

But I do," he insisted. "It makes me feel as though …" he hesitated, searching for words with which to express himself, "as though I were more me, if you see what I mean. More on my own, not so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell in the social body. Doesn't it make you feel like that, Lenina?

I want to know what passion is," she heard him saying. "I want to feel something strongly.

You can't have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices.

For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.

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.

He continued, slowly, by a process of osmosis and white knowledge (which is like white noise, only more useful), to comprehend the city, a process that accelerated when he realized that the actual City of London itself was no bigger than a square mile.

Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the flood is passion, the flood is even madness: it depends on the force of the current, the height and strength of the barrier. The unchecked stream flows smoothly down its appointed channels into a calm well-being.

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

He held out his right hand in the moonlight. From the cut on his wrist the blood was still oozing. Every few seconds a drop fell, dark, almost colourless in the dead light. Drop, drop, drop. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. . .He had discovered the Time and Death and God.

You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the high art.

Reuben was the child of Polish-speaking parents.’ The Director interrupted himself. ‘You know what Polish is, I suppose?’ ‘A dead language.

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.

That which had made Helmholtz so uncomfortably aware of being himself and all alone was too much ability.

He would think of Heaven and London and Our Lady of Acoma and the rows and rows of babies in clean bottles and Jesus flying up and Linda flying up and the great Director of World hatcheries and Awonawilona.

How does he manifest himself now? asked the Savage. Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren’t there at all.

Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas—that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it!

Yes," Mustapha Mond was saying, "that's another item in the cost of stability. It isn't only art that's incompatible with happiness; it's also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.

Shut lips, sleeping faces,Every stopped machine,The dumb and littered placesWhere crowds have been:.All silences rejoice,Weep (loudly or low),Speak-but with the voiceOf whom, I do not know.

Home, home - a few small rooms, stiflingly over-inhabited by a man, by a periodically teeming woman, by rabble of boys and girls of all ages. No air, no space; an understerilized prison; darkness, disease and smells.

Brave New World

By aldous huxley, brave new world quotes and analysis.

"...COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY." Brave New World, 1.

These three words hang in a sign over the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, which creates and conditions new human life. These words comprise the slogan for society. "Community" means that all persons must work together to maximize the greatest happiness for society as a whole, and it occurs through the artificially implanted ideas of "Identity" that each person has. Some are alphas, betas, gammas, etc., but each person is supposed to be happy with their own identity. Finally, "Stability" is the ultimate goal of society because only through stability can happiness be maintained and all unpleasant feelings and emotions be eradicated.

"...you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk." Brave New World, 34.

This saying, quoted by Mustapha Mond, instructs his citizens to disregard the painful lessons of history and to ignore the past in order to focus on future progress. Society disregards history because if people understood what came before, they might not be willing to put their trust in science and progress. History is "bunk," as Mond says, because it revolves around human frailties and emotions such as love, anger, vengeance, and temptation. Such things are no longer part of the human experience and, according to Mond, have no place in a society built around maximizing happiness.

"A gramme is better than a damn." Brave New World, 54.

This phrase signifies the maximization of happiness and good feelings in Huxley's utilitarian society. The greatest good for the greatest number of people, according to Huxley, is to minimize any negative emotions or feelings. To do this, individuals receive a gramme of soma, a narcotic that puts them into a state of unfeeling unconsciousness. Anytime individuals feel unhappy, they remember this phrase.

"The more stitches the less riches..." Brave New World, 51.

Every person repeatedly hears this hypnopaedic phrase from an early age. The phrase is embedded so deeply into the consciousness of each person that they take its meaning to be truth. In this case, the phrase sparks consumer behavior, since the more a person repairs their consumer goods, the less they will buy, resulting in less money in the economic system of society. Creating consumption is one of the chief tasks of government because consumption keeps lower castes employed with no time on their hands for disruptive behavior.

"What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder." Brave New World, 21.

This phrase, spoken by the Director, plays on the common phrase during a marriage ceremony - "What God has joined, let no man put asunder." In the marriage ceremony, the phrase evokes God's foreknowledge of bringing two persons together in love. In this quote, the Director claims the supremacy of science and progress. Man, not a god or nature, has put together the human body and mind, essentially conquering nature.

"Everyone works for every one else. We can't do without any one. Even Epsilons..." Brave New World, 91.

This quote from Lenina demonstrates the high priority put on community and identity in the society. Social castes move from the Alphas, the most talented and beautiful people in society, to the Epsilons and Gammas, the world's menial laborers. However, each person’s conditioning causes him to feel as though they are all part of an idea economic and social system. Later in the novel, John Savage tries to point out that such a system really only benefits those who rule it, not those that are a part of it.

"So they're having children all the time - like dogs. It's too revolting...And yet John was a great comfort to me." Brave New World, 122.

Linda says this line when Bernard and Lenina visit her on the reservation. Linda, a former inhabitant of the civilized world, tries to explain the incomprehensible behavior of the savages, but this quote illustrates the power of the bonds of parenthood. Huxley often uses surprising emotions in particular characters to demonstrate that there are certain aspects of being human that government and society cannot suppress.

"Why was that old fellow [Shakespeare] such a marvelous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about. You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating X-rayish phrases..." Brave New World, 188.

In this passage, Helmholtz Watson responds after John Savage reads to him from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet . Watson realizes that Shakespeare represents a certain kind of mastery over language and emotion - the same kind of work that he himself does, but Shakespeare is infinitely better at such things because he deals with real human emotion, something that the inhabitants now regard as foreign.

"You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art." Brave New World, 226.

In this line, Mustapha Mond responds to John Savage's protests that Shakespeare's literature is better than anything that results from society’s emotional engineering. Mond's agrees that Savage has a point, but he claims that in this society, happiness is the greatest good, and great literature can only come from turmoil and unhappiness. In order to achieve the greatest amount of happiness possible, civilized society has sacrificed art.

"It isn't only art that's incompatible with happiness; it's also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled." Brave New World, 231.

Mustapha Mond posits that science cannot be the only factor in progress. Throughout the novel, the inhabitants of civilized society learn to regard scientific progress as the greatest good, but science often illuminates facts that do not profit an individual's happiness. Progress often makes life more difficult for some and easier for others. Science can thus be a destabilizing force in society.

Brave New World Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Brave New World is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

On page 29, what is the hypnopaedic proverb about "dating"?

My page numbers don't match yours but I recall it was something like "everyone belongs to everyone else."

what is a "soma holiday" ? why does lenina go on one?

A soma holiday is a drug induced form of relaxation.

Chapter 6, Brave New World

In Chapter Six, the Director's story expresses emotions of fear and love. Since society expressly forbids this, he realizes that he should not have told Bernard about his experience. Thus, the Director's anger towards Bernard arises from his fear...

Study Guide for Brave New World

Brave New World study guide contains a biography of Aldous Huxley, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Brave New World
• Brave New World Summary
• Brave New World Video
• Character List

Essays for Brave New World

Brave New World essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

• Methods of Control in 1984 and Brave New World
• Cloning in Brave New World
• God's Role in a Misery-Free Society
• Character Analysis: Brave New World
• Influences Behind Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451

Lesson Plan for Brave New World

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Brave New World
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Brave New World Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Brave New World

• Introduction

The 15 Best Quotes from Brave New World

A classic dystopian, science-fiction novel by English author Aldous Huxley, Brave New World has become a worldwide literary classic and a mainstay in high school English curriculums since its 1932 release.

Its insidious and disturbing story introduces us to the futuristic World State, in which citizens are genetically modified, molded into a strict social hierarchy, brainwashed into loving their own servitude and forced into a doctored happiness that comes in the form of a government-issued drug. Led by a dictatorial “Controller” named Mustapha Mond, the World State is an unsettling, sinister place endowed with warped visions of an ideal society meant to alienate and disgust readers who value truth, love, beauty and freedom.

Brave New World is stuffed with classic quotes and phrases that rear their heads in essays, papers and other literary works. Here are a few of our favorites.

1. On danger, freedom and sin

“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.”

John the Savage incites chaos when he throws out the soma, a government-sponsored drug, at a hospital. When he’s brought before the great Controller Mustapha Mond to answer for his crime, John gets sick of Mond’s talks of being comfortable and responds with this great rallying cry for adventure and nonconformity.

2. On the dullness of happiness

“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.”

The Controller informs us that while we all chase after happiness and stability, it’s never quite as grand or glamorous as struggle, suffering and instability.

3. On being conditioned to believe

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”

In this utopia—er, dystopia—people are brainwashed, or hypnopaedia-ed, from the day they’re born (and born from bottles, at that). Mond argues that people only believe things because they’re told to by some outside force, whether that be hypnopaedia or just societal norms.

4. On remorse

“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.”

Anyone who’s ever made a mistake, which is all of us, knows that guilt is a terrible feeling. Here, in Huxley’s 1946 forward to the novel, we’re reminded not to roll in the muck and dwell in that guilt, but instead to make amends and move on. You have to do more than just be sorry for your mistakes, but there’s also no point in perpetual remorse.

5. On servitude and revolution

“… Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.”

This quote reminds us of Dostoevsky as Huxley writes that, in the end, people “will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, ‘make us your slaves but feed us.’” In this society and in ours, people are comfortable handing over freedom to people in power in exchange for safety and stability. In this exchange, people learn to love their servitude, choosing it over any dreams of revolution.

6. On civilization

“I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then,” he added in a lower tone, “I ate my own wickedness.”

Here, John is struggling to cope with the World State’s lack of humanity and of the traditional values he grew up with. He feels the temptations of his primal urges and the superficial aspects of this society, and reflects on his shame at entering the carefully controlled chaos of this civilization, allowing it to poison and defile him.

7. On totalitarian control

“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.”

Huxley once again harkens back to the idea of slaves loving their servitude. Once again, if they trade their freedom for stability and are vulnerable to the “mind manipulation” of their society, people quickly morph into slavery who are held to their servitude not by force, but by a love of their position and the stability it provides.

8. On a little place called Heaven

“There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.”

Religion is a central topic in Brave New World and Mond tells us that where religion failed, drugs and alcohol succeeded. While religion did not give people the comfort they needed, drugs and alcohol fill in those gaps in this society. Alcohol, as well as a hefty array of hallucinogens, is used to weed out any bouts of dissatisfaction, creating a superficial, neverending happiness.

9. On industrialization

“A love of nature keeps no factories busy.”

In a society built on technological advance (but not scientific progress because science is dangerous), a love of nature and its beauty isn’t ideal, so Mond decided to abolish the love of nature among the lower classes that toil in factories, doing mindless, mechanical work.

10. On being our own masters

“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.”

Mond (who gets all the good lines) explains that we may think we love our freedom and independence, our ability to do things for ourselves and make our own choices. But really, independence is an unnatural state for humankind and won’t lead us to happiness.

11. On happiness

“Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning, truth and beauty can’t.”

Truth and beauty are dangerous distractions that run the risk of sowing the seeds of unhappiness. Instead, universal, yet artificial happiness keeps society running at full efficiency.

12. On unhappiness

“I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”

Disgusted by the artificial, mindless happiness he sees in the citizens of the World State, John defiantly utters this classic line.

13. On science

“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.”

In our society, science and technology go hand-in-hand. But in Brave New World , the two are disconnected as science is scorned as dangerous because it is purely an intellectual pursuit built on curiosity. Yet the World State runs on technology, which is used as a practical means to control its citizens.

14. On truth, beauty and knowledge

“What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you?”

The dictatorship of Brave New World followed an awful Nine Years’ War, during which people were allowed to pursue truth, beauty and knowledge, but they had no stability or safety as bombs exploded around them. As they recovered from the war, people realized they were willing to trade truth, beauty and knowledge for safety and stability.

15. On having ownership of ourselves

“But every one belongs to every one else.”

A hypnopaedic proverb asserts that the citizens of the World State have no ownership of their own selves or bodies. Sixty-two thousand repetitions of this proverb had made the children of the World State accepting of this doctrine as “axiomatic, self-evident, utterly indisputable.” It feels like we’re ending on a bit of a downer, but so did Brave New World , so it seems fitting.

Christine Fernando is an intern at Paste with an affinity for horror movies, pretentious poetry and trashy reality TV. Don’t try to follow her on Twitter because she doesn’t have one.

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'Brave New World' Quotes Explained

• M.A., Classics, Catholic University of Milan
• M.A., Journalism, New York University.
• B.A., Classics, Catholic University of Milan

Aldous Huxley's classic dystopian novel, Brave New World , deals with issues of technological advancements, sexuality, and individuality in the context of a dehumanizing society. Huxley explores how his characters react to living in a dystopian future society, in which everyone’s place is strictly defined. 

Quotes About Love and Sex

"Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder those poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty—they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable?" (Chapter 3)

In Chapter 3, Mustapha Mond explains the history of the World State to a group of boys touring the Hatchery. “Mother, monogamy, and romance” are concepts that are reviled in the World State, as is the whole idea of “feeling strongly”; however, for John, these are core values, as he is devoted to his mother, and strives for monogamy and romance while still experiencing feelings unfiltered by soma . Eventually, abiding by those feelings causes him to try to purify himself with self-flagellation, which, in an unfortunate turn of events, leads to his madness and suicide. His demise does, indirectly, prove Mustapha Mond’s point, as, by eliminating “mother, monogamy, and romance” alongside “feeling strongly,” the World State succeeded in creating a stable society where everybody was superficially happy. Sure, human beings are indoctrinated to behave in one way only according to their caste, and the whole State is a system founded on production and consumption, fueled by the consumerist tendencies of its inhabitants; yet, they are happy. They just need to drink soma and choose merriment over truth.

"'Whore!' he shouted 'Whore! Impudent strumpet!'" (Chapter 13)

John yells these words at Lenina as she gets naked in front of him. Citing his beloved Shakespeare, he addresses her as a “disrespectful whore.” It’s a line coming from Othello, where the titular character is about to kill his wife Desdemona as he became convinced she had been cheating on him. Both instances of the use “impudent strumpet” are misdirected, though: Desdemona was faithful all along, while Lenina had been sleeping around because the society she was raised in conditioned her to do so. Othello and John see their love interest as both sleazy and beautiful, which disturbs John, since he is not able to compute feelings of repulsion and attraction at the same time. In fact, such contrasting feelings eventually lead him to madness and death.

Quotes About Politics

"When the individual feels, the community reels." (Various mentions)

This is a Society’s teaching of the World State, which goes hand in hand with “never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today.” Lenina pronounces it to Bernard after they had spent a night together in his rooms, which he regretted, saying he wished it had ended differently, especially considering it was their first day together. She claims it’s pointless to put off having any fun, while he wants to “feel something strongly,” which is largely discouraged in the World State, as feelings can overthrow any form of stability. Yet, Bernard yearns for some reeling, too. This conversation makes Lenina feel rejected.

"Yes, and civilization is sterilization." (Chapter 7)

Civilization is sterilization is one of the main Society’s teachings in Brave New World , and different characters utter it throughout the novel. Sterilization can mean different things: one is sanitation and cleanliness, as opposed to the filth people in the Reservation live in. “I had an awful cut on my head when they first brought me here. You can't imagine what they used to put on it. Filth, just filth,” Linda recalls before uttering the statement. Similarly, Lenina equates sterilization with cleanliness, which she insists “is next to fordliness.” However, sterilization can also be interpreted with regards to making women unable to bear children. In the World State, 70% of the female population are made into freemartins, meaning sterile women. They achieve that by injecting the female embryos with a low dose of sex hormones. This makes them sterile and fairly normal, except for the slight tendency to grow a beard. 

"Our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers 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." (Chapter 16)

With these words which Mustapha Mond speaks to John, in a philosophical-debate-like fashion, he details why Shakespeare is obsolete in the World State. Being a highly educated man, he admits to them being beautiful, but his words are old and, thus, unfit for a society that is primarily oriented to consumerism. What’s more, he belittles John for using Shakespeare as a paradigm of values and ethics, because Shakespeare’s world is very different from the World State. His was a world subjected to turmoil and instability, while the World State is essentially stable, which, in turn, is not a fertile ground for tragedies. 

Quotes About Happiness

"And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. 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." (Chapter 17)

This quote is excerpted from a conversation between John and Mustapha, which takes place in Chapter 17. Mustapha is trying to convince John that soma is a cure-all remedy for any unpleasant emotion which can lead to inefficiency and conflict. Unlike the hard moral training of the past, soma can solve any ailment of the soul almost instantly.

Curiously, the parallel between moral training, which is usually a core aspect of religion, and soma, hints at the origin of the word soma itself. It used to be an entheogenic draught that was consumed during rituals in the Vedic religion. Several myths also see two opposing factions of deities fighting over the ownership of soma. However, while soma was originally consumed by gods and humans alike in order to attain “the light” and immortality, the soma, which in the World State comes in convenient tablets, is mainly used to deal with any “unpleasantness”: Lenina knocks herself out with it after being unable to endure the horrors she witnessed in the Reservation. Meanwhile, Linda, who in her isolation in the Reservation had been looking for a substitute for the soma in mescaline and peyotl, eventually is prescribed a lethal dose of soma once she gets back to the World State.

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Naming Guides, Quotes, Inspiration

167+ Brave New World Quotes [Important Quotes, Technology Quotes]

“Brave New World” is a dystopian novel written by Aldous Huxley in 1932. It explores a future society where people are genetically engineered and conditioned to live in a world where pleasure and consumption are the primary objectives.

The novel is full of quotes that reflect the unique characteristics of this world. Here are some important quotes that highlight the novel’s themes of technology and control:

Important Quotes :

• “Community, Identity, Stability.” – This quote reflects the World State’s primary values. The society in “Brave New World” prioritizes the collective over the individual, and community is emphasized over personal desires.
• “Everyone belongs to everyone else.” – This quote reflects the World State’s attitude toward relationships. The society encourages promiscuity and considers monogamy to be primitive.
• “Ending is better than mending.” – This quote reflects the society’s attitude toward consumerism. Rather than repairing old items, people are encouraged to buy new ones.

Technology Quotes :

• “All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.” – This quote highlights the role of technology in the novel. The society in “Brave New World” uses technology to create a world without pain or suffering, but also without passion or emotion.
• “Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth.” – This quote reflects the role of conditioning in the novel. The society uses Pavlovian techniques to condition its citizens to accept its values and beliefs.
• “Progress is lovely, isn’t it?” – This quote reflects the society’s attitude toward progress and technology. The society values progress above all else and views technological advances as a sign of its success.

Overall, “Brave New World” is a cautionary tale about the dangers of using technology to control society.

The quotes in the novel reflect the unique characteristics of this dystopian world and highlight the importance of individual freedom and autonomy.

We have many quotes from the book to explore in this article.

Let’s take a look.

Table of Contents

Brave New World Quotes

Some quotes from “Brave New World”:

• “A gramme in time saves nine.”
• “Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery.”
• “Everyone belongs to everyone else.”
• “One cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments.”
• “The more stitches, the less riches.”
• “History is bunk.”
• “The best science is a happy man.”
• “The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get.”
• “The greater a man’s talents, the greater his power to lead astray.”
• “Ending is better than mending.”
• “God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness.”
• “I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
• “O brave new world that has such people in it.”
• “That’s the price we have to pay for stability.”
• “What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.”
• “All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.”
• “Better than nature!”
• “Sleep teaching was actually prohibited in England.”
• “Progress is lovely, isn’t it?”
• “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”
• “Every one works for every one else.”
• “The conditioning of the masses.”
• “Happiness is never grand.”
• “The mind that judges and desires and decides–made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!”
• “I suppose Epsilons don’t really mind being Epsilons.”
• “They were born together, grew up together, and now they were suffering together–all in the impersonal majesty of the state.”
• “Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can’t.”
• “No civilization without social stability.”
• “What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you?”
• “Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child’s mind.”
• “Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything.”
• “They’ll have that repeated forty or fifty times more before they wake; then again on Thursday, and again on Saturday.”
• “Do you remember that bit in King Lear?”
• “In the end, they’ll beat you with experience.”
• “What is the point of a book when one can have a gramme?”
• “Humanity is interesting only in the abstract.”
• “There was something called democracy.”
• “People believe in God because they’ve been conditioned to believe in God.”
• “Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth.”
• “When the individual feels, the community reels.”
• “All the fetal conditioning, hypnopaedic training, and drug dosing in the world cannot make a human being into a machine.”
• “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.”
• “I’d rather be myself. Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.”
• “You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We’ve sacrificed the high art.”
• “But if anything should go wrong, there’s always soma.”
• “A gramme in time saves nine, but it must be a real gramme. Not one of those essence of gramme tablets.”
• “Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child’s mind. And not the child’s mind only. The adult’s mind too–all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides–made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!”
• “The people who govern us nowadays are philosophers and the scientists. They know what they want and they’re going to get it.”
• “Beauty’s attractive, and we don’t want anybody to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones.”
• “There is no happiness for people at the expense of other people.”
• “I don’t understand anything,” she said with decision, determined to preserve her incomprehension intact. “Nothing. Least of all,” she continued in another tone “why you don’t take soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. You’d forget all about them. And instead of feeling miserable, you’d be jolly. So jolly,”
• “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.”
• “We prefer to do things comfortably.”
• “No social stability without individual stability.”
• “The world is 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 practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave.”
• “You’re so conditioned to be an Epsilon, you can’t help feeling inferior.”
• “The power of suggestion. That’s the key. We’ve made the complete conquest of the individual will.”
• “No conditioning is irresistible.”
• “It isn’t only art that’s incompatible with happiness; it’s also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.”
• “The human spirit needs to accomplish, to achieve, to triumph to be happy. But precisely these things which belong to the realm of politics or of the intricate games of competitive industry are not compatible with the conditions of absolute rule which the party now requires.”
• “We’ve got to have a snappy slogan if we’re going to rule the world together.”
• “Why do you always go about together in fours?” “It’s one of the conditions,” said Bernard stiffly. “Males, more than one, are too self-absorbed to be really interested in others. We bond because we’ve been taught to bond.”
• “It is not possible to keep a population in thrall if they have any sense of solidarity. Solidarity is not possible if the individuals are too completely atomized.”
• “Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.”
• “One day the chemical and electrical conditioning machines might be broken. But till then we can’t do without them.”
• “We can’t do without any of it. No civilization without social stability. No social stability without individual stability.”
• “We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own.”
• “To the controllers of this world, God is unnecessary. Science has made him obsolete.”
• “The greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time has been the book club.”
• “The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg – eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.”
• “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.”
• “There isn’t any need for a civilized man to bear anything that’s seriously unpleasant.”
• “And don’t forget that, besides contraceptives, there are always soma and hypnopaedia to give you a holiday from the facts.”
• “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.”
• “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.”
• “Everyone works for everyone else. We can’t do without any one. Even Epsilons are useful. We couldn’t do without Epsilons. Every one works for every one else. We can’t do without any one.”
• “The aim of the World State is not happiness. Stability is the aim.”
• “We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it’s almost impossible for them to ever have it.”
• “The perfect drug. Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant.”
• “Perhaps you’re planning a very small unorthodoxy?”
• “I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse.”
• “What you need,” the Savage went on, “is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here.”
• “A gramme is better than a damn.”
• “But God’s the reason for everything noble and fine and heroic. If you had a God, you’d have a reason for noble things.”
• “It is better to be happy than to be right.”
• “Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment.”
• “They say somebody made the show up, that there wasn’t any Savage Reservation really. That it was just a story to make people feel bad. Anyhow, they went on and on about how the Savage ate people up.”
• “Stability wasn’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’ve gone on controlling ever since. It hasn’t been very good for truth, of course. But it’s been very good for happiness. One can’t have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.”
• “The people who have been most responsible for the preservation of freedom and the encouragement of science have been the heretics.”
• “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 practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave.”
• “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
• “The human race is obsessed with its own fictions.”
• “We condition the masses to hate the country; but simultaneously we condition them to love all countries.”

4 Quotes From Brave New World That Have Come True

Most Important Brave New World Quotes

Most Important Brave New World Quotes:

• “Community, Identity, Stability” – This is the motto of the World State, emphasizing the importance of conformity and sameness in maintaining social order.
• “Ending is better than mending” – This quote represents the society’s attitude towards consumption and the disposal of goods, rather than repairing or reusing them.
• “Everyone belongs to everyone else” – This quote emphasizes the communal nature of relationships in the World State, where sexual promiscuity is encouraged and individual relationships are discouraged.
• “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.” – This quote, spoken by the character John, represents his rejection of the World State’s values and his desire for authentic human experiences.
• “History is bunk” – This quote represents the World State’s rejection of the past and their focus on the present and future.
• “Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” – This quote represents the power of language and its ability to influence and shape individual thought and perception.
• “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.” – This quote, spoken by the character Mustapha Mond, emphasizes the sacrifices made in the pursuit of stability and happiness in the World State.
• “Happiness is a hard master–particularly other people’s happiness.” – This quote represents the idea that the pursuit of happiness can be at odds with individual autonomy and freedom.
• “You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art.” – This quote represents the tension between individual creativity and expression, and the desire for conformity and stability in the World State.
• “You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.” – This quote represents the World State’s emphasis on mindless entertainment and distraction, rather than intellectual pursuits.

Famous Brave New World Quotes

Famous Brave New World Quotes:

• “The best works of art are the expression of man’s struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten.” – This quote, spoken by the character Helmholtz Watson, represents the idea that art can be used to either challenge or reinforce societal norms.
• “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” – This quote represents the power of conditioning and its ability to shape individual beliefs and perceptions.
• “You’re free to do what you want, but you can’t want what you ought.” – This quote represents the tension between individual desire and societal expectations in the World State.
• “The conditioning now starts at six months instead of sixteen years. And by the time they’re grown-up, their minds have been conditioned into infantile state.” – This quote represents the extreme level of control exerted by the World State over individual development and thought.
• “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 practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave.” – This quote, spoken by the character Mustapha Mond, represents the World State’s ideal of a perfect, conformist society, free from the struggles and complexities of human relationships.
• “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.” – This quote represents the World State’s belief that individuals can find happiness and fulfillment in accepting and embracing their predetermined roles in society.
• “Did you ever feel, 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?” – This quote, spoken by the character Bernard Marx, represents the desire for individual potential and creativity, in contrast to the World State’s emphasis on conformity and stability.
• “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.” – This quote represents the tension between the pursuit of happiness and the desire for excitement and drama in life.
• “But I like the inconveniences.” “We don’t,” said the Controller. “We prefer to do things comfortably.” – This exchange between the characters Mustapha Mond and John represents the tension between individual desire and societal expectations in the World State.
• “You’ve got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can’t think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases.” – This quote, spoken by the character Helmholtz Watson, represents the idea that creativity and intellectual insight can come from personal struggle and emotional pain.

Brave New World Technology Quotes

• “All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.” – This quote represents the World State’s use of technology and conditioning to control and shape individual behavior and thought.
• “The machine turns, turns and must keep turning — forever. It is death if it stands still.” – This quote represents the World State’s emphasis on progress and technological advancement, at the expense of human autonomy and freedom.
• “Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today.” – This quote represents the World State’s use of instant gratification technology to distract individuals from the realities of their lives.
• “The mind that judges and desires and decides—made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions… Suggestions from the State.” – This quote represents the power of hypnopaedia, a form of subconscious suggestion through sleep conditioning, in shaping individual thought and behavior in the World State.
• “When the individual feels, the community reels.” – This quote represents the World State’s belief that emotional and individual expression can disrupt social stability and order.
• “Ending is better than mending.” “The more stitches, the less riches.” – These quotes represent the World State’s attitude towards consumption and the disposal of goods, rather than repairing or reusing them.
• “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.” – This quote, spoken by the character John, represents the rejection of the World State’s values and the desire for authentic human experiences, including those that may be uncomfortable or dangerous.
• “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.” – This quote represents the tension between the pursuit of stability and the desire for excitement and drama in life, as well as the World State’s use of technology to maintain social order and avoid conflict.
• “But I like the inconveniences.” “We don’t,” said the Controller. “We prefer to do things comfortably.” – This exchange between the characters Mustapha Mond and John represents the tension between individual desire and societal expectations in the World State, as well as the World State’s use of technology to create a comfortable, controlled environment.
• “You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art.” – This quote represents the tension between individual creativity and expression, and the desire for conformity and stability in the World State, as well as the World State’s use of technology to distract individuals from deeper intellectual pursuits.

Brave New World Hypnopaedia Quotes

Brave New World Hypnopaedia Quotes:

• “All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.” – This quote represents the power of hypnopaedia, a form of subconscious suggestion through sleep conditioning, in shaping individual thought and behavior in the World State.
• “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.” – This quote represents the dystopian nature of the World State, where individual autonomy and freedom are sacrificed in the pursuit of social order and stability.
• “One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments.” – This quote represents the World State’s use of hypnopaedia to control and suppress negative emotions and individuality.
• “All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences.” – This quote represents the World State’s use of hypnopaedia to provide individuals with the illusion of intense emotional experiences, without the risks and complexities of real relationships and emotions.
• “Everybody’s happy now.” – This phrase is repeated throughout the hypnopaedic recordings in the World State, representing the emphasis on conformity and sameness in the society.
• “Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really 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.” – This quote represents the World State’s use of hypnopaedia to reinforce social hierarchies and class distinctions, as well as to promote conformity and obedience.
• “Ending is better than mending.” “The more stitches, the less riches.” – These quotes, spoken during hypnopaedic conditioning, represent the World State’s attitude towards consumption and the disposal of goods, rather than repairing or reusing them.
• “Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending.” – This phrase is repeated during hypnopaedic conditioning, emphasizing the World State’s emphasis on consumption and instant gratification, rather than preservation and sustainability.
• “We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future… Directors of Hatcheries.” – This quote represents the World State’s use of hypnopaedia to reinforce predetermined social roles and discourage individuality and autonomy.
• “A gramme is better than a damn.” – This phrase is repeated during hypnopaedic conditioning, emphasizing the World State’s emphasis on the use of the drug Soma to suppress negative emotions and promote conformity.

Brave New World Power Quotes

Brave New World Power Quotes:

• “Community, Identity, Stability” – This is the motto of the World State, emphasizing the importance of conformity and sameness in maintaining social order and the power of the state over individual thought and behavior.
• “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” – This quote represents the power of conditioning and its ability to shape individual beliefs and perceptions, as well as the power of the state to control and manipulate individuals through this conditioning.
• “But I like the inconveniences.” “We don’t,” said the Controller. “We prefer to do things comfortably.” – This exchange between the characters Mustapha Mond and John represents the tension between individual desire and societal expectations in the World State, as well as the power of the state to enforce conformity and discourage individuality.
• “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.” – This quote, spoken by the character John, represents the rejection of the World State’s values and the desire for authentic human experiences, as well as the power of the individual to resist and challenge the state’s control.
• “One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments.” – This quote represents the power of the state to control and suppress negative emotions and individuality through the use of hypnopaedia and the drug Soma.
• “I’d rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here.” – This quote, spoken by the character John, represents the rejection of the World State’s version of happiness and the power of the individual to resist conformity and pursue authentic human experiences, even if they are painful or difficult.
• “But 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 practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave.” – This quote, spoken by the character Mustapha Mond, represents the power of the state to maintain social order and stability, even at the expense of individual freedom and autonomy.
• “You all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford’s: History is bunk.” – This quote represents the power of the state to control and manipulate individual perception and understanding of the past, in order to maintain social order and stability.
• “The machine turns, turns and must keep turning — forever. It is death if it stands still.” – This quote represents the power of the state to enforce progress and technological advancement, even at the expense of human autonomy and freedom.
• “Our Ford – or Our Freud, as, for some inscrutable reason, he chose to call himself whenever he spoke of psychological matters – Our Freud had been the first to reveal the appalling dangers of family life.” – This quote represents the power of the state to challenge and redefine traditional values and institutions, in order to maintain social order and stability.

FAQs – Brave New World Quotes

Why did brave new world become such a famous book.

“Brave New World” is a famous novel written by Aldous Huxley, first published in 1932.

The book is often cited as one of the most influential dystopian novels of the 20th century.

It gained its fame and popularity due to several factors:

• It presented a thought-provoking view of the future . The novel is set in a futuristic society where people are conditioned from birth to behave in specific ways. This idea of conditioning and control of individuals, especially in a world that was experiencing rapid technological advancements, captivated readers’ imaginations.
• It portrayed a warning about the dangers of technology and progress . Huxley’s book argued that unchecked scientific advancement could lead to a dehumanized and shallow society. This idea resonated with readers who were concerned about the rapid technological changes taking place in their world.
• It explored themes of individuality, conformity, and freedom . These were themes that were relevant in the 1930s, as people were grappling with the rise of totalitarian regimes in Europe. Huxley’s book provided a commentary on the dangers of a conformist society and the importance of individual freedom.
• The book was well-written and received critical acclaim . The book’s style was innovative and experimental, and it was well-received by literary critics. It became an instant bestseller and has remained popular ever since.

Overall, “Brave New World” became famous because it presented a compelling and thought-provoking vision of the future, explored themes that were relevant to its time, and was well-written and critically acclaimed.

What is the background on why Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World?

Aldous Huxley wrote “Brave New World” in 1931, and it was published in 1932. The novel is a dystopian science-fiction work set in the year 2540, in a future world where people are genetically engineered, socially conditioned, and kept content with a drug called soma.

Huxley’s inspiration for the book came from a variety of sources. He was interested in the ideas of social and genetic engineering, which were being discussed at the time by scientists and intellectuals. He also drew on his own experiences of living in a world that was rapidly changing due to advances in technology and industry.

In addition, Huxley was concerned about the direction that society was heading in the early 20th century. He was critical of what he saw as the dehumanizing effects of mass production, consumerism, and conformity. He believed that the pursuit of pleasure and efficiency was leading to a loss of individuality and spiritual values.

All of these themes are explored in “Brave New World,” which portrays a society that has taken these trends to their logical extreme. The novel was meant to be a warning about the dangers of unchecked technological progress and the loss of humanity that can result from it.

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