"What is the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then... we've gone on controlling since.
"It hasn't been very good for truth.. but it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.
"You're paying for it, Mr. Watson - paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I paid for it, because I happened to be too much interested in truth."
{never be willing to give up beauty for comfort; never sacrifice truth for safety.}
"What about self-denial then? If you had a God, you'd have a reason for self-denial. You'd have a reason for chastity."
"But chastity means passion, chastity means *neurasthenia. And passion and neurasthenia mean instability. And instability means the end of civilization. You can't have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices."
"But God's the reason for everything noble and fine and heroic. If you had a God..."
"My dear young friend, " said Mustpha Mond, "civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism.. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunity for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise."
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin."
{when you eliminate all of the unstable, all the danger, you eliminate the need for God to come through.. and eliminate all the things that come from God... beauty, truth, freedom and true love.}
"What you need," the Savage went on, "is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here."
___________________________________________
{quotes from Brave New World, by Adolus Huxley}
{words in brackets are mine}
* neurasthenia
[noo͡r′əsthē′nē·ə]
Etymology: Gk, neuron + a + sthenos, without strength
1 an abnormal condition that often follows depression, characterized by nervous exhaustion and a vague functional fatigue.
2 (in psychiatry) a stage in the recovery from a schizophrenic experience during which the patient is listless and apparently unable to cope with routine activities and relationships. neurasthenic, adj.
