Imagination should be used, not to escape reality but to create it.

The mystical impulse in men is somehow a desire to possess the universe. In women, it's a desire to be possessed.

The "passion for incredulity" can produce as much self-deception as the uncritical will to believe.

Christianity was an epidemic rather than a religion. It appealed to fear, hysteria and ignorance. It spread across the Western world, not because it was true, but because humans are gullible and superstitious.

When we pull back and get, for a moment, the 'bird's eye' view of life, it reveals meanings that are ungraspable by the narrow focus of our usual worm's eye view

If you asked me what is the basis of all my work, it's the feeling there's something basically wrong with human beings.

Man is the only animal who is prone to insanity.