Aleister Crowley Quotes

"Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness."

"The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach."

"The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing."

"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."

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

"I can imagine myself on my death-bed, spent utterly with lust to touch the next world, like a boy asking for his first kiss from a woman."

"In the absence of will-power the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless."

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

"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."

"Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people."

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

"To the eyes of a god, mankind must appear as a species of bacteria which multiply and become progressively virulent whenever they find themselves in a congenial culture, and whose activity diminishes until they disappear completely as soon as proper measures are taken to sterilize them."

"Indubitably, Magic is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgment and practice than in any other branch of physics."

"I was asked to memorise what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner."

"To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter."

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

"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."

"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."