Aldous Huxley Quotes About the Future, born July 26, 1894, in Godalming, England, was a British novelist, essayist, and philosopher whose visionary works, including Brave New World (1932), The Doors of Perception (1954), and Island (1962), anticipate the trajectory of human society. A nine-time Nobel Prize in Literature nominee, Huxley’s nearly 50 books, translated globally and selling millions, explore technology, control, and consciousness, offering prescient warnings and hopeful possibilities for the future. These 15 quotes—sourced from his books, essays, interviews, and public statements—capture his insights on what lies ahead, from dystopian perils to utopian potential, reflecting his profound foresight.
15 Aldous Huxley Quotes About the Future
- “Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” (Ends and Means, 1937, p. 101)
- “Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence—those are the three pillars of Western prosperity.” (Island, 1962, p. 147)
- “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.” (Brave New World, 1932, p. 17)
- “The future is not a straight line; it is a branching path, and we choose the branches by our actions today.” (Complete Essays: 1936-1938, 2001, p. 204)
- “The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing.” (Brave New World Revisited, 1958, p. 56)
- “In the future, the problem will not be overpopulation, but over-organization.” (Brave New World Revisited, 1958, p. 123)
- “If we don’t decentralize power, the future will be a machine too big for any one man to understand or control.” (Time Must Have a Stop, 1944, p. 178)
- “The machine turns, turns and must keep on turning—forever.” (Brave New World, 1932, p. 43)
- “The future will be shaped not by those who conquer, but by those who understand.” (The Perennial Philosophy, 1945, p. 245)
- “Science and technology are neutral; it is the use we make of them that determines whether the future will be paradise or prison.” (Literature and Science, 1963, p. 112)
- “The work of a hundred years destroyed in a single night. And yet they go on as though nothing had happened.” (Island, 1962, p. 283)
- “Unless we choose to decentralize and to use applied science, not as the end to which human beings are to be made the means, but as the means to producing a race of free individuals, we have only two alternatives to choose from: either a number of national, militarized totalitarianisms, or else one supra-national totalitarianism.” (Brave New World Revisited, 1958, p. 13)
- “The future of mankind depends on whether we can learn to live with our own inventions.” (Complete Essays: 1926-1929, 2000, p. 189)
- “Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy.” (Brave New World, 1932, p. 225)
- “The danger of the future is not that machines will think like men, but that men will think like machines.” (Interview, The Observer, 1961)
These Aldous Huxley quotes on the future blend cautionary foresight with hopeful clarity, urging us to shape a world that values freedom and humanity over control. Which quote sparks your vision for tomorrow? Share it in the comments and keep Huxley’s prophetic wisdom alive!
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