Religions survive mainly because they brainwash the young.

And I say, the meaning of life is what you make it. There will be as many different meaningful lives as there are people to live them.

Nothing is truly unnatural, because everything that exists, including human intelligence, is a product of nature. If human intelligence can devise ways for the genes from two men to result in a child, their doing so is an entirely natural event.

I despise people who depend on these things [heroin and cocaine]. If you really want a mind-altering experience, look at a tree.

Socrates famously said that the unconsidered life is not worth living. He meant that a life lived without forethought or principle is a life so vulnerable to chance, and so dependent on the choices and actions of others, that it is of little real value to the person living it. He further meant that a life well lived is one which has goals, and integrity, which is chosen and directed by the one who lives it, to the fullest extent possible to a human agent caught in the webs of society and history.

Religions survive mainly because they brainwash the young.

Just as modern motorways have no room for ox-carts or wandering pedestrians, so modern society has little place for lives and ways that are too eccentric.