What is there to say, finally, except that pain is bad and pleasure good, life all, death nothing.

God, or what have you, will not be found at the far end of a syllogism, no matter how brilliantly phrased or conceived.

I might become an ascetic, live in India. A little rice is about the best I can do now.

We're the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody's afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else.

...you will do more harm than good by attempting to supplant old dogmas and customs with new dogmas. It will be the same in the end except that the old is less militant, less dangerous than a new order imposed by enthusiasts.

I deny that there's such a thing as a gay person. I deny there's such a thing as a heterosexual person.

It is astonishing to think that millions of people in my time—now, too, I suppose—actually thought that at a given moment in history two human beings had evolved to a higher state than that of all the gods that ever were or ever will be. This is titanism, as the Greeks would say. This is madness.