Narayanamurthy S.R.

“Or consider another field where one can use games to implant an understanding of basic principles. All scientific thinking is in terms of probability. The old eternal verities are merely a high degree of likeliness; the immutable laws of nature are just statistical averages. How does one get these profoundly unobvious notions into children’s heads? By playing roulette with them, by spinning coins and drawing lots. By teaching them all kinds of games with cards and boards and dice.”
― Aldous Huxley, Island

“Our primary emphasis isn’t on physics and chemistry; it’s on the sciences of life.”
“Is that a matter of principle?”
“Not entirely. It’s also a matter of convenience and economic necessity. We don’t have the money for large-scale research in physics and chemistry, and we don’t really have any practical need for that kind of research—no heavy industries to be made more competitive, no armaments to be made more diabolical, not the faintest desire to land on the backside of the moon. Only the modest ambition to live as fully human beings in harmony with the rest of life on this island at this latitude on this planet. We can take the results of your researches in physics and chemistry and apply them, if we want to or can afford it, to our own purposes. Meanwhile we’ll concentrate on the research which promises to do us the greatest good—in the sciences of life and mind.”
― Aldous Huxley, Island

“The Palanese were Buddhists. They knew how misery is related to mind. You cling, you crave, you assert yourself—and you live in a homemade hell. You become detached—and you live in peace. ‘I show you sorrow,’ the Buddha had said, ‘and I show you the ending of sorrow.”
― Aldous Huxley, Island

“But the power problem has its roots in anatomy and biochemistry and temperament. Power has to be curbed on the legal and political levels; that’s obvious. But it’s also obvious that there must be prevention on the individual level. On the level of instinct and emotion, on the level of the glands and the viscera, the muscles and the blood. If I can ever find the time, I’d like to write a little book on human physiology in relation to ethics, religion, politics and law.”
― Aldous Huxley, Island