Brave New World quotes

“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 behaviour..”

Theme: Individuality

Said by: The Director, about Bernard to Henry Foster

Explanation:

• Director is telling Henry why Bernard deserved to be punished for expressing different interests and opinions than those around him.

• As Bernard is an Alpha, he s intelligent and therefore has the “power to lead astray” the members of lower social groups around him.

• For a society that values stability and sameness, Bernard’s intelligence and willingness to express difference and individuality are extremely threatening and must be controlled through public punishment.

“Everyone belongs to everyone else.”

Theme: Individuality

Said by: Hypnopaedic slogan

Explanation:

• Is a line from social conditioning recordings that different characters repeat throughout the text.

• It means that no relationship, especially no email relationship, is more important than any other, and every person has the right to have sexy with anyone else. This principle creates a collective body and person that is more important than the individual person

“It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettles minds among the higher castes—make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness.”

Theme: Authority and control

Said by: Mustapha Mond

Explanation:

• In passage, Mustapha reviews an article about human purpose and decides to censor it by writing “Not to be published.”

• While in a democratic society, the free circulation of new ideas and theories is considered a social good, in Brave New World’s totalitarian society, subversive ideas that challenge the status quo are dangerous to social stability and could undermine or threaten those in power.

• Censorship is an important tool for totalitarian governments to suppress ideas that challenge the absolute authority of those in power.

“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 desires and decides—made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions…Suggestions from the State!”

Theme: Authority and control

Said by: The Director

Explanation:

• Director explains how hypnopaedia—repetition of recorded phrases every night that is used to condition children in their sleep, shapes the minds and desires of human beings in Fordist society.

• The repeated phrases determine how the child behaves, and as novel shows, they stick with each person for the rest of their lives, guiding their decisions + behaviours

• Director namely excited that these phrases come directly from the state, allowing those in power to have direct access to people’s personalities.

“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. They’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill; they’re not afraid of death; they’re blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they’re plagued with no mothers or fathers; they’ve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave.”

Theme: Happiness and agency

Said by: Mustapha Mond

Explanation:

• Mustapha says this to John when he dames to know why no great literature had been written in the new society, and why Shakespeare banned

• For Mustapha, stability is the highest goal of human society, so it is best when all human emotions can be eliminated except for bland enjoyment

• John makes point that without the whole range of human emotion and experience, literature and art can no longer exist

• To John, this is a huge loss, and terrible fate for humanity

• In Mustapha’s view, is the best possible world

“In spite of their sadness—because of it, even; for their sadness was the symptom of their love for one another—the three young men were happy.”

Theme: Happiness and agency

Said by: Third person narrator of text

Explanation:

• This line occurs at the end scene with John, Bernard and Hemholtz, right before Bernard + Hemholtz leave for an island away from Fordist society

• They are sad as they are about to be separated, but this sadness does not negate their happiness and their love for each other

• This overlap of complex emotions is a direct contrast to the words about happiness as satisfaction and the absence of difficult feelings that appear throughout the book

• Suggests perhaps that sadness is a component of being happy and feeling love.

“One egg, one embryo, one adult—normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress.”

Theme: History and Progress

Said by: The Director

Explanation:

• In Chapter 1, Director explains Bokanovsky’s Process to the students

  • This is the process where humans are genetically engineered through twinning or cloning—from a single embryo, 96 genetically identical human beings are formed.

  • According to the Director, this is a technological advancement that signifies progress

• The students wrote down what the Director says without stopping to question whether or not this kind of “progress” is ethical.

• When one students asks the advantages of this process, the Director replies that it is: “one of the major instruments of social stability.”

“There was something called liberalism…Liberty to be inefficient and miserable. Freedom to be a round peg in a square shaped hole.”

Theme: History and progress

Said by: Mustapha Mond

Explanation:

• In chapter 2, Mustapha explains ‘history’ to students, insisting that prior Fordism, human society was backwards and terrible. In his view, freedoms of the past are only obstacles to social stability.

• To eliminate these freedoms through technology, like though genetic and social conditioning is the ultimate human progress

• His statements are ironic, however, as they go against definitions of progress and the ideas of Western civilisation: freedom, individualism, and choice.

Faint almost to imperceptibility, but appealing, she suddenly heard the grinding of his teeth. “What is it?” she almost screamed.

And as though awakened by her cry he caught her by the shoulders and shook her. “Whore!” he shouted. “Whore! Impudent strumpet!”

Character: John

Explanation:

• Lenina tried to seduce John, but he is committed to the idea of monogomy which he had learned on the Savage Reservation and from Shakespeare’s plays.

• He cannot bear to have sex without meaningful romantic commitment.

• As always, John’s passion causes him to become violent

• Brave New World asks whether its better to feel intense passion, even if it means suffering, than to live a life of easy please with no great highs or lows.

“From his place on the opposite side of the changing-room aisle, Bernard Marx overheard what they were saying and turned pale.”

Character: Bernard

Explanation:

• Passage is from Bernard’s first appearance

• Bernard is listening to Henry Foster and the Assistant Predestinator talk about having sex with Lenina

• On one hand, Bernard feels disgusted by teh World State’s attitude to promiscuity

• On other, he is jealous of Fister’s relationship with Lenina

• Bernard is caught between two conflicting desires: to reject the society of the world state and to be embraced by it.

“[…]Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can’t. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered.”

Character: Mustapha Mond

Explanation

• Although Mond believes in the value of human happiness, he also admits that happiness serves a purpose: it “keeps the wheels steadily turning.”

• In other words, promote stability adn productivity

• Here, Mond also reveals that the World State’s philosophy has toots in the politics of Huxleys on time

• The World States pursuit of happiness serves Ford-era “mass production.”

• Happiness first became a priority, according to Mond, under the (twentieth century) capitalist adn communist systems in which “the masses seized political power.”