Brave New World Quotes

Quote 1: "Community, Identity, Stability". Chapter 1, pg. 1

Quote 2: "The operation undergone voluntarily for the good of Society, not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to six months' salary," The Director, Chapter 1, pg. 5

Quote 3: "And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue-liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny." Chapter 1, pg. 16

Quote 4: "What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder." The Director, Chapter 2, pg. 22

Quote 5: "These," he said gravely, "are unpleasant facts; I know it. But then most historical facts are unpleasant." The Director, Chapter 2, pg. 24

Quote 6: "Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta." Sleep-teaching, Chapter 2, pg. 27

Quote 7: "Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too-all his life long. The mind that judges and desire and decides-made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions... Suggestions from the State." Chapter 2, pg. 28-29

Quote 8: "In the lift, on their way up to the changing rooms, Henry Foster and the Assistant Director of Predestination rather pointedly turned their backs on Bernard Marx from the Psychology Bureau: averted themselves from that unsavoury reputation." Chapter 3, pg. 34

Quote 9: "You all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 3, pg. 34

Quote 10: "Those who feel themselves despised do well to look despising. The smile on Bernard Marx's face was contemptuous." Chapter 3, pg. 35

Quote 11: "Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches." Sleep-teaching, Chapter 3, pg. 49

Quote 12: "All of the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 3, pg. 54

Quote 13: "The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone. A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self-consciously on his dignity." Chapter 4, Part 2, pg. 65

Quote 14: "Bottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted!
Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted?
Skies are blue inside of you,
The weather's always fine;
For
There ain't no Bottle in all the world
Like that dear little Bottle of mine."
Calvin Stopes and His Sixteen Sexophonists, Chapter 5, Part 1, pg. 76

Quote 15:
"Ford, we are twelve; oh make us one,
Like drops within the Social River;
Oh, make us now together run
As swiftly as thy shining Flivver.
Come, Greater Being, Social Friend,
Annihilating Twelve-in-One!
We long to die, for when we end,
Our larger life has but begun." Orgy-porgy, Chapter 5, Part 2, pg. 81

Quote 16: "a gramme in time saves nine," Lenina, Chapter 6, Part 1, pg. 89

Quote 17: "One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments," Lenina, Chapter 6, Part 1, pg. 89

Quote 18: "A gramme is better than a damn." Lenina, Chapter 6, Part 1, pg. 89

Quote 19: "When the individual feels, the community reels." Lenina, Chapter 6, Part 1, pg. 94

Quote 20: "Cleanliness is next to fordliness." Lenina, Chapter 7, pg. 110

Quote 21: "Yes, and civilization is sterilization." Bernard, Chapter 7, pg. 110

Quote 22: "Lying in bed, he would think of Heaven and London and Our Lady of Acoma and the rows and rows of babies in clean bottles and Jesus flying up and Linda flying up and the great Director of World hatcheries and Awonawilona." Chapter 8, pg. 128

Quote 23: "The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behavior. Murder kills only the individual-and, after all, what is an individual?... We can make a new one with the greatest ease-as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself." The Director, Chapter 10, pg. 148

Quote 24: "Why was that old fellow [Shakespeare] such a marvellous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excriciating things to get excited about. You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating X-rayish phrases... No, it won't do. We need some other kind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where can one find it?... I don't know." Helmholtz Watson, Chapter 12, pg. 185

Quote 25: "Put your arms around me...Hug me till you drug me, honey...Kiss me till I'm in a coma. Hug me honey, snuggly..." Lenina, Chapter 13, pg. 194

Quote 26: "They had mocked him through his misery and remorse, mocked him with how hideous a note of cynical derision! Fiendishly laughing, they had insisted on the low squalor, the nauseous ugliness of the nightmare. Now, suddenly, they trumpeted a call to arms. 'O brave new world!' Miranda was proclaiming the possibility of loveliness, the possibility of transforming even the nightmare into something fine and noble. 'O brave new world!' It was a challenge, a command." Chapter 15, pg. 210

Quote 27: "Hesitant on the fringes of the battle, 'They're done for,' said Bernard and, urged by a sudden impulse, ran forward to help them; then thought better of it and halted; then, ashamed, stepped forward again; then again thought better of it, and was standing in an agony of humiliated indecision-thinking that they might be killed if he didn't help them, and that he might be killed if he did-when (Ford be praised!), goggle-eyed and swine-snouted in their gas-masks, in ran the police." Chapter 15, pg. 214

Quote 28: "Our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers without steel-and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get...And if anything should go wrong, there's soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr. Savage. Liberty!... Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy!... Of course [Othello is better than those feelies]. But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 16, pg. 220

Quote 29: "Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 16, pg. 221

Quote 30: "All our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 16, pg. 225

Quote 31: "We can't allow science to undo its own good work." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, pg. 227

Quote 32: "God in the safe and Ford on the shelves." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, pg. 231

Quote 33: "The Gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; providence takes its cue from men." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, pg. 236

Quote 34: "There's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that's what soma is." World Controller Mustapha Mond, Chapter 17, pg. 238

Quote 35: "In fact', said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.'
'All right then,' said the Savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.'

'Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.' There was a long silence.
'I claim them all,' said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. 'You're welcome,' he said." Chapter 17, pg. 240

Quote 36: "We want the whip!" Chapter 18, 257

Quote 37: "Fry, lechery, fry! ... Oh, the flesh!... Kill it, kill it," The Savage, Chapter 18, pg. 258

Quote 38: "Oh, my God, my God!" The Savage, Chapter 18, pg. 264

Quote 39: "Just under the crown of the arch dangled a pair of feet.
'Mr. Savage!'
Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east..." Chapter 18, pg. 259