The Stoic assures us that what is happening now will happen over and over again. [If so, Providende would] ultimately grow weary through despair.

Real life is, to most men, a long second best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.

I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

Admit at least one painful truth to yourself every day. Teach yourself to feel that life would still be worth living even if you were not immeasurably superior to all your friends. Exercises of this sort, prolonged through several years, will at last enable you to admit facts without flinching, and will, in so doing, free you from the empire of fear over a very large field.

Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.