Brave New World quotes
64 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"What I may call the messages of Brave New World, but it is possible to make people contented with their servitude. I think this can be done. I think it has been done in the past. I think it could be done even more effectively now because you can provide them with bread and circuses and you can provide them with endless amounts of distractions and propaganda."
"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."
"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."
"Hug me till you drug me, honey; Kiss me till I'm in a coma."
"On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean."
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside brave new world — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth."
"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?"
"No social stability without individual stability."
"Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books."
"Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning, truth and beauty can't."
"The greatest triumphs of propoganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth."
"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."
"All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny."
"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."
"O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!"
"When the individual feels, the community reels."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"But every one belongs to every one else"
"What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you?"
"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."
"If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time."
"The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg- eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above."
"What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder."
"The more stitches, the less riches."
""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."
