Aleister Crowley.

I Was Asked to Memorise What I Did Not Understand; And, My Memory Being so Good, It Refused to Be Insulted in That Manner.

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 Gods Say ‘No.’ I Have No Idea How They Bring Presure to Bear on Such Occasions; I Only Know That It Is Irresistible.

Falsehood Is Invariably the Child of Fear in One Form or Another.

Existence, as We Know It, Is Full of Sorrow. to Mention Only One Minor Point: Every Man Is a Condemned Criminal, Only He Does Not Know the Date of His Execution. This Is Unpleasant for Every Man. Consequently Every Man Does Everything Possible to Postpone the Date, and Would Sacrifice Anything That He Has If He Could Reverse the Sentence. Practically All Religions and All Philosophies Have Started Thus Crudely, by Promising Their Adherents Some Such Reward as Immortality. No Religion Has Failed Hitherto by Not Promising Enough; the Present Breaking up of All Religions Is Due to the Fact That People Have Asked to See the Securities. Men Have Even Renounced the Important Material Advantages Which a Well Organized Religion May Confer Upon a State, Rather Than Acquiesce in Fraud or Falsehood, or Even in Any System Which, If Not Proved Guilty, Is at Least Unable to Demonstrate Its Innocence. Being More or Less Bankrupt, the Best Thing That We Can Do Is to Attack the Problem Afresh Without Preconceived Ideas. Let Us Begin by Doubting Every Statement. Let Us Find a Way of Subjecting Every Statement to the Test of Experiment. Is There Any Truth at All in the Claims of Various Religions? Let Us Examine the Question.

Magick Is the Science and Art of Causing Change to Occur in Conformity with Will.

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.

Love Is the Law, Love Under Will.

I May Be a Black Magician but I’m a Bloody Great One.

Not All the Filth of London Can Keep Me from the Light of God, and by That Light, I Live.

One of the Principal Points About the Sin Stupidity Is That It Flatters the Sinner. All Insanity Depends Upon the Exacerbation of the Ego. the Melancholic Hugs the Delusion That He Has Committed the Unpardonable Sin. Sins Grow by Repression and by Brooding Upon Their Enormity. Few People Would Go to Excess If They Were Not Unwholesomely Over Excited About Their Trivial Apishness.

I Am Inclined to Think That the Most Scientific and Reliable Way of Exploring People’s Unconscious Minds Would Be to Watch Their Reaction to a Well Thought Out Series of Unfamiliar Circumstances. One Could Compare Their Respective Qualities, Such as Will Power, Patience, Dignity, Courage, Imperturbability, and so On. Such Data Should Be of Great Use in Answering the Question, ‘Wherewithal Shall a Young Man Mend His Ways?’

The Fact Is That the Vast Majority of People Are Absolutely Impervious to Facts. Test the Average Man by Asking Him to Listen to a Simple Sentence Which Contains One Word with Associations to Excite His Prejudices, Fears or Passions He Will Fail to Understand What You Have Said and Reply by Expressing His Emotional Reaction to the Critical Word. It Was Long Before I Understood This Fact of Psychology. Even to This Day, It Surprises Me That There Should Be Minds Which Are Unable to Accept Any Impression Equably and Critically. I Have Heard Many Great Orators. the Effect Has Nearly Always Been to Make Me Wonder How They Have the Nerve to Put Forward Such Flimsy Falsehoods.

My Mission Is, in Short, to Bring Everyone to the Realization and Enjoyment of His Own Kingship, and My Apparent Interference with Him Amounts to No More Than Advice to Him Not to Suffer Interference.

Of Course the World Forces Us All to Compromise with Our Environment to Some Extent, and We Only Waste Our Strength If We Fight Pitched Battles for Points Which Are Not Worth a Skirmish. It Is Only a Faddist Who Refuses to Conform with Conventions of Dress and the Like. but Our Sincerity Should Be Roman About Things That Really Matter to Us. and I Am Still in Doubt, as I Write These Words, as to How Far It Is Right to Employ Strategy and Diplomacy in Order to Gain One’s Point. … Adaptation to One’s Environment Makes for a Sort of Survival; but After All, the Supreme Victory Is Only Won by Those Who Prove Themselves of so Much Harder Stuff Than the Rest That No Power on Earth Is Able to Destroy Them. the People Who Have Really Made History Are the Martyrs.

To Read a Newspaper Is to Refrain from Reading Something Worthwhile. the First Discipline of Education Must Therefore Be to Refuse Resolutely to Feed the Mind with Canned Chatter.

Magic Is the Highest, Most Absolute, and Most Divine Knowledge of Natural Philosophy, Advanced in Its Works and Wonderful Operations by a Right Understanding of the Unward and Occult Virtue of Things; so That True Agents Being Applied to Proper Patients, Strange and Admirable Effects Will Thereby Be Produced. Whence Magicians Are Profound and Diligent Searchers into Nature; They, Because of Their Skill, Know How to Anticipate an Effect, the Which to the Vulgar Shall Seem to Be a Miracle.

Indubitably, Magick Is One of the Subtlest and Most Difficult of the Sciences and Arts. There Is More Opportunity for Errors and Comprehension, Judgment and Practice Than in Any Other Branch of Physics.

Sometimes I Hate Myself.

Initiation Is Never What You Think It Is to Be: If It Were, You Would Already Be Initiated.

Even a Scapegoat Is Liable to Butt.

It Is Quite Certain, in Particular, That I Have Always Been Insane.

Syphilis Is Probably the Physical Basis of Genius.

Painting, Like Golf, Is an Old Man’s Game.

Practically All Women Ought to Be Chloroformed at 35.

In Berlin All the Whores Look Like ‘Respectable Women’; in New York All the ‘Respectable Women Look Like Whores. Reflection: They’re All Whores, Anyhow.

All Modern Legislation Seems Designed to Hamper Honest Folk Who Wish to Do Normal Things. but I Don’t Have to Get a License If I Want to Commit Burglary or Murder.

A Person’s Religious Belief Varies with His Sense of Helplessness.

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.

There Is a Single Main Definition of the Object of All Magical Ritual. It Is the Uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. the Supreme and Complete Ritual Is Therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; Or, in the Language of Mysticism, Union with God.

Christianity Is Like a Painted Mummy; Expose It to Fresh Air, and It Crumbles to Dust.

To Succeed in England, It Is Only Necessary to Keep Doing Badly What Someone Was Once Crucified There for Doing Well.

Paganism Is Wholesome Because It Faces the Facts of Life.

For Pure Will, Unassuaged of Purpose, Delivered from the Lust of Result, Is Every Way Perfect.

Science Is Always Discovering Odd Scraps of Magical Wisdom and Making a Tremendous Fuss About Its Cleverness.

Ordinary Morality Is Only for Ordinary People.

You’d Have to Be Insane to Take the Bible Seriously, but Then You’d Have to Be Insane to Read It Seriously to Start With.

What the Eye Doesn’t See, the Heart Doesn’t Grieve Over

Balance Every Thought with Its Opposition. Because the Marriage of Them Is the Destruction of Illusion

It Is the Mark of the Mind Untrained to Take Its Own Processes as Valid for All Men, and Its Own Judgments for Absolute Truth.