Aldous Huxley

July 26, 2012

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On this date in 1894, Aldous Huxley, grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley and brother of Julian Huxley, was born in Surrey. An eye disease blinded Aldous at age 16 for about a year and a half. He regained enough vision to study, read and become a successful novelist. Two volumes of his poetry were published while he was still a student at Oxford. He launched a successful career as a satiric writer of novels, which included: Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925), Point Counter Point (1928), Brief Candles (1930), Brave New World (1932) and Eyeless in Gaza (1936). His screenplays included "Pride and Prejudice" (MGM's version of the Austen book), "Madame Curie" (1938), and "Jane Eyre" (1944). Huxley observed toward the end of his life: "It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'Try to be a little kinder.' " D. 1963.

“If we must play the theological game, let us never forget that it is a game. Religion, it seems to me, can survive only as a consciously accepted system of make-believe . . .

You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion . . . Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.”

— Aldous Huxley, Texts and Pretexts,1932

Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor (FFRF)