Aleister Crowley
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.Collection: Education
Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness.Collection: Wisdom
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.Collection: Science
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.Collection: Morning
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.Collection: Experience
Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.Collection: Fear
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.
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.
Intolerance is evidence of impotence.
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.
Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life.
I have never grown out of the infantile belief that the universe was made for me to suck.
The people who have really made history are the martyrs.
Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.
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.
If one were to take the bible seriously one would go mad. But to take the bible seriously, one must be already mad.
The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.
I was asked to memorise what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner.
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.
The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.
Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.
Chinese civilisation is so systematic that wild animals have been abolished on principle.
To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.
Part of the public horror of sexual irregularity so-called is due to the fact that everyone knows himself essentially guilty.
The key of joy is disobedience.Collection: Keys
There is no grace: there is no guilt: This is the Law: DO WHAT THOU WILT!Collection: Law
You can only accomplish your object in life by complete disregard of the opinions of other people.Collection: People
The Devil' is, historically, the God of any people that one personally dislikes... This serpent, SATAN, is not the enemy of Man, but He who made Gods of our race, knowing Good and Evil; He bade 'Know Thyself!' and taught Initiation. He is 'The Devil' of the Book of Thoth, and His emblem is BAPHOMET, the Androgyne who is the hieroglyph of arcane perfection... He is therefore Life, and Love.Collection: Life And Love
A man who is doing his True Will has the inertia of the Universe to assist him.Collection: Men
Balance every thought with its opposition. Because the marriage of them is the destruction of illusion.Collection: Balance
Magic is real. And reality... it is magical.Collection: Real
It is necessary that we stop, once for all, this ignorant meddling with other people's business. Each individual must be left free to follow his own path.Collection: People
Happiness lies within one's self, and the way to dig it out is cocaine.Collection: Lying
Those magicians who object to the use of blood, have endeavored to replace it with incense. But, the bloody sacrifice, though more dangerous, is more efficacious. And for nearly all purposes, human sacrifice is the best.Collection: Sacrifice
Sanity is a compromise.Collection: Compromise
Repeal all laws which assume that mankind is a herd of cattleCollection: Law
Love is the only principle which makes life tolerable.Collection: Love Is
Inevitably anyone with an independent mind must become 'one who resists or opposes authority or established conventions': a rebel. If enough people come to agree with, and follow, the Rebel, we now have a Devil. Until, of course, still more people agree. And then, finally, we have --- Greatness.Collection: Philosophy
The Way of Mastery is to break all the rules—but you have to know them perfectly before you can do this; otherwise you are not in a position to transcend them.Collection: Mastery
Every one interprets everything in terms of his own experience. If you say anything which does not touch a precisely similar spot in another man's brain, he either misunderstands you, or doesn't understand you at all.Collection: Men
This serpent, SATAN, is not the enemy of Man, but He who made Gods of our race, knowing Good and Evil; He bade 'Know Thyself!' and taught Initiation.Collection: Men
Tell the truth, but lead so improbable a life that the truth will never be believed.Collection: Truth
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.Collection: Angel
To train the mind to move with the maximum speed and energy, with the utmost possible accuracy in the chosen direction, and with the minimum of disturbance or friction. That is Magick. To stop the mind altogether. That is Yoga.Collection: Moving
Your friends will notice at once that glib vacuities fail to impress, and hate you, and tell lies about you. It's worth it.Collection: Hate
Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will.Collection: Art
A burnt child dreads the fire.Collection: Children
I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered — now I have only one doubt left — which of the twain was God?Collection: Struggle
Must not understanding lie open unto wisdom as the pyramids lie open to the stars? (6:2)Collection: Stars