Quotes

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” 

Nearly all human thought within the dystopia of Brave New World has been manipulated or is even created by science. The conditioning of young children makes it so that no adult truly has their own thoughts and is completely formed by science.

“I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then," he added in a lower tone, "I ate my own wickedness.”

This quote could be interpreted as a symbol of our everlasting desire for new technology, our so called “wickedness”.

“A love of nature keeps no factories busy.”

This perfectly describes the total lack of environmental consideration some of the most influential leaders of our society have because of their own self-interest.

“Pain was a fascinating horror.”

Pain is seen as an intersting phenomenon in Brave New World, it is not at all recognised as a valid human emotion or experience. Society has been conditioned yet again to percieve emotion as some weird anomaly that only rarely occurs, just like we do with some aspects of science. Huxley makes it seem as if emotion and science are swapped around, for science is normal and apart of the everyday routine, but emotion is seen as some odd behaviour that people don't understand.

“We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability.”

Even though science is something that is evolving and being expanding everyday, the leaders in the novel are strongly against change, unless it is in their own interest, to be used to control the people. This is very counterintuitive because they want to keep everything as it is, while trying to maintain a futuristic utopia.