We have become so accustomed to the religious lie that surrounds us that we do not notice the atrocity, stupidity and cruelty with which the teaching of the Christian church is permeated.
Nowhere nor in anything, except in the assertion of the Church, can we find that God or Christ founded anything like what churchmen understand by the Church.
Reason unites us, not only with our contemporaries, but with men who lived two thousand years before us, and with those who will live after us.
Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man’s reasonable perception into feeling.
The idea shared by many that life is a vale of tears is just as false as the idea shared by the great majority, the idea to which youth and health and riches incline you, that life is a place of entertainment.
Do not be sad about what you do not have. Instead, be happy about what you do have. If you will be sad about what you don’t have, you will not be happy about what you do have.
Perhaps it is even more important to know what one should not think about than what one should think about.
As soon as man applies his intelligence to any object at all, he unfailingly destroys the object.
Until you do what you believe in, you don’t know whether you believe it or not.
A new conception of life cannot be imposed on men; it can only be freely assimilated. And it can only be freely assimilated in two ways: one spiritual and internal, the other experimental and external.
Effort is not a means to lead us to happiness. Effort itself is happiness.
And for him, who lived in a certain circle, and who required some mental activity such as usually develops with maturity, having views was as necessary as having a hat.
Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the relation that exists between the expression of someone’s will and the execution of that will by others.
The purpose of life is to bring forth goodness. Now, in this life.
Grow spiritually and help others to do so. It is the meaning of life.
Since corrupt people unite amongst themselves to constitute a force, then honest people must do the same.
The best thoughts most often come in the morning after waking, while still in bed or while walking.
When you say, ‘I can’t do that,’ you’re expressing yourself incorrectly. You should say, ‘I couldn’t do that before.’
This is where the strength of the physician lies, be he a quack, a homeopath or an allopath. He supplies the perennial demand for comfort, the craving for sympathy that every human sufferer feels.
The chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.