To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior "righteous indignation"—this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.

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

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

—Aldous Huxley

church nature mountains father

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.

—Aldous Huxley

morality regret repentance remore

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.

—Aldous Huxley

happiness pursuit

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

—Aldous Huxley

gratitude ability

Dream in a pragmatic way.

—Aldous Huxley

idealism dream pragmatism

More quotations tagged with “psychology”

A broken leg can be remembered and located: "It hurt right below my knee, it throbbed, I felt sick at my stomach." But mental pain is remembered the way dreams are remembered—in fragments, unbidden realizations, like looking into a well and seeing the dim reflection of your face in that instant before the water shatters.

—Tracy Thompson

memory pain psychology

You never get over it. But you get to where it doesn’t bother you so much.

—Jeffrey Eugenides in The Virgin Suicides

memory moving on psychology

A sense of reverence is necessary for psychological health. If a person has no sense of reverence, no feeling that there is anyone or anything that inspires awe, it cuts the personality off completely from the nourishing springs of the unconscious.

—Robert Johnson

wonder awe personality psychology revernce unconscious

Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

—David Sedaris

writing control psychology illusion

Hollywood is a place where they place you under contract instead of under observation.

—Walter Winchell

Hollywood psychology contracts

History

20 Dec 2014 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior "righteous indignation" — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.