Aleister Crowley Quotes

"Love stories are only fit for the solace of people in the insanity of puberty. No healthy adult human being can really care whether so-and-so does or does not succeed in satisfying his physiological uneasiness by the aid of some particular person or not."

"I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff."

"Part of the public horror of sexual irregularity so-called is due to the fact that everyone knows himself essentially guilty."

"Intolerance is evidence of impotence."

"The people who have really made history are the martyrs."

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."

"In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless."

"Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales."

"Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life."

"The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal."

"I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning."

"Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people."

"The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript."

"Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another."

"Chinese civilisation is so systematic that wild animals have been abolished on principle."

"Destiny is an absolutely definite and inexorable ruler. Physical ability and moral determination count for nothing. It is impossible to perform the simplest act when the gods say ''no.'' I have no idea how they bring pressure to bear on such occasions; I only know that it is irresistible."

"There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: ''More money for more work.''"

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law"

"It sometimes strikes me that the whole of science is a piece of impudence; that nature can afford to ignore our impertinent interference. If our monkey mischief should ever reach the point of blowing up the earth by decomposing an atom, and even annihilated the sun himself, I cannot really suppose that the universe would turn a hair."

"I have never grown out of the infantile belief that the universe was made for me to suck."