One-third, more or less, of all the sorrow… [we] must endure is… inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time… toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two-thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.

About Aldous Huxley

Aldous Leonard Huxley ( AWL-dəs; 26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives and poems.

More quotations from Aldous Huxley

The course of every intellectual, if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the nonintellectuals have never stirred.

—Aldous Huxley

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

—Aldous Huxley

music

Experience teaches only the teachable.

—Aldous Huxley

learning experience teachable

Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.

—Aldous Huxley

experience

At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religous or political ideas.

—Aldous Huxley

History

1 Jan 2016 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

One-third, more or less, of all the sorrow . . . [we] must endure is . . . inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time . . . toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two-thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.