Quotes by Aleister Crowley
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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.
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.
The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.
If one were to take the bible seriously one would go mad. But to take the bible seriously, one must be already mad.
I have never grown out of the infantile belief that the universe was made for me to suck.
The supreme satisfaction is to be able to despise one's neighbor and this fact goes far to account for religious intolerance. It is evidently consoling to reflect that the people next door are headed for hell.
Part of the public horror of sexual irregularity so-called is due to the fact that everyone knows himself essentially guilty.
Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life.
Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.
To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.
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 willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.
Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness.
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.
There is only one really safe, mild, harmless beverage and you can drink as much of that as you like without running the slightest risk, and what you say when you want it is, "Garcon! Un Pernod!"
Intolerance is evidence of impotence.
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.
The people who have really made history are the martyrs.
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.
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.
The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
I was asked to memorise what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner.
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.
To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all. A message from the gods should be delivered at once. It is damnably blasphemous to talk about the autumn season and so on. How dare the author or publisher demand a price for doing his duty, the highest and most honorable to which a man can be called?
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