The profession of shaman has many advantages. It offers high status with a safe livelihood free of work in the dreary, sweaty sense. In most societies it offers legal privileges and immunities not granted to other men. But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; it causes one to suspect that the shaman is on the moral level of any other con man. But it is a lovely work if you can stomach it.

A human being has no natural rights of any nature.

Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative.

I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it.

Who is more real? Homer or Ulysses? Shakespeare or Hamlet? Burroughs or Tarzan?

One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.

Once there was a race, quite unlike the human race - quite. I have no way of describing to you what they looked like or how they lived, but they had one characteristic you can understand: they were creative. The creating and enjoying of works of art was their occupation and their reason for being.