Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion go hand in hand.
Many people have the reasoning facility, but no one uses it in religious matters.
To be born in imbecility, in the midst of pain and crisis; to be the plaything of ignorance, error, need, sickness, wickedness, and passions; to return step by step to imbecility, from the time of lisping to that of doting; to live among knaves and charlatans of all kinds; to die between one man who takes your pulse and another who troubles your head; never to know where you come from, why you come and where you are going! That is what is called the most important gift of our parents and nature. Life.
There is no other life; life itself is only a vision and a dream for nothing exists but space and you. If there was an all-powerful God, he would have made all good, and no bad.
Every living thing is a sort of imperialist, seeking to transform as much as possible of its environment into itself.
The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.
The Devil's strategy for our times is to trivialize human existence and isolate us from one another while creating the delusion that the reasons are time pressures, work demands or economic anxieties.
... reason accepts no commandments.
People want to be at the center of the Universe...and they're going to flock to anybody who tells them that.
No one holds command over me. No Man. No God. No King. No Prince. What is a claim of age? For ones who are immortal What is a claim of power? For ones who defy death Call your damnable hunt. And we shall see Whom I drag screaming to hell with me.
I believe that in your heart you already know something is profoundly wrong. When bartenders are responsible for drunk drivers' acts, and gunmakers are responsible for criminals' acts, and nobody is responsible for O. J. Simpson's acts, something is wrong.
Men always try to make virtues of their weaknesses. Fear of death and fear of life both become piety.
Nothing's beautiful from every point of view.
The last 100 years of research into the human brain...sees the brain as an organ that works by physical principles just like the other organs in the body...our emotions and higher callings, such as religion, as well as our grubby low-level physical systems like stereo vision and motor control, are products of a machine.
It is difficult to imagine anyone having any real hopes for the human race in the face of the fact that the great majority of men still believe that the universe is run by a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft and girth, who is nevertheless interested in the minutest details of the private conduct of even the meanest man.
My hands are small, but they're not yours, they are my own... I am never broken.
Society has traditionally always tried to find scapegoats, well here I am.
If your reality is the same as my reality, then you're in trouble.
I am Zarathustra the Godless: where shall I find my equal? All those who give themselves their own will and renounce all submission, they are my equals.
Do you think in many ways, sir, you're the victim of circumstance now?
What you hold in your hand is proof of man's power - against which our strength means nothing. It has the force of 100 spears. I warn you, man's ingenuity goes hand-in-hand with their cruelty. No creature is as devious or violent.
Nothing is bigger than life. There's nothing noble in death. What's noble about never seeing the sunshine again? What's noble about having your legs and arms blown off? What's noble about being an idiot? What's noble about being blind and deaf and dumb? What's noble about being dead?
Lies are the mortar that binds the savage individual man into the social masonry.
No sooner is the rage of hunger appeased than it becomes difficult to comprehend the meaning of starvation. It is only when you suffer that you really understand.
Nothing is more despicable than the old age of a passionate man. When the vigour of youth fails him, and his amusements pall with frequent repetition, his occasional rage sinks by decay of strength into peevishness; that peevishness, for want of novelty and variety, becomes habitual; the world falls off from around him, and he is left, as Homer expresses it, to devour his own heart in solitude and contempt.
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