Quotes, passages, and ideas worth remembering.
“Control your mind, or your mind will control you.”
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men and women to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
“You are here now. These are the good old days.”
“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”
“Don't believe everything you think.”
“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”
“The future is already here, it's just not very evenly distributed.”
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
“Don't let schooling interfere with your education.”
“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.”
“Don't leave important conflicts unresolved.”
“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
“It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.”
“The ordinary human being does not live long enough to draw any substantial benefit from his own experience. And no one, it seems, can benefit from the experiences of others. Being both a father and teacher, I know we can teach our children nothing. Each must learn its lesson anew.”
“Gradually, then suddenly.”
“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise.”
“You’re never going to be perfect—there is no such thing. You’re human. So instead, aim for progress, even the smallest amount.”
“There is no way to happiness — happiness is the way.”
“The moment you see your challenges as a puzzle and not a problem, you’ve found your way out.”
“Relax. No one else knows what they’re doing either.”
We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.