Love and hatred are not blind, but are blinded by the fire they bear within themselves.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

From people who merely pray we must become people who bless.

There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, and, of its many rungs, three are the most important. People used to make human sacrifices to their god, perhaps even sacrificing those they loved the best ... Then, during the moral epoch of humanity, people sacrificed the strongest instincts they had, their 'nature,' to their god... Finally: what was left to be sacrificed? ... Didn't people have to sacrifice God himself and worship rocks, stupidity, gravity, fate, or nothingness out of sheer cruelty to themselves?

But this people has deliberately made itself stupid, for nearly a millennium: nowhere have the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been abused more dissolutely.

I admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates in everything he did, said--and did not say.

Sometimes we remain true to a cause simply because its opponents are unfailingly tasteless.