Aleister Crowley

May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early! My own plan is to swear off every kind of virtue, so that I triumph even when I fall!

I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.

People think that talking is a sign of thinking. It isn't, for the most part; on the contrary, it's a mechanical dodge of the body to relieve oneself of the strain of thinking, just as exercising the muscles helps the body to become temporarily unconscious of its weight, its pain, its weariness, and the foreknowledge of its doom.

Sex is, directly or indirectly, the most powerful weapon in the armoury of the Magician; and precisely because there is no moral guide, it is indescribably dangerous.

Semen is God.

This is my real bed-rock objection to the eastern systems. They decry all manly virtue as dangerous and wicked, and they look upon Nature as evil.

To seduce women under the pretense of religion is unutterable foulness; though both adultery and religion are themselves clean. To mix jam and mustard is a messy mistake.

These are fools that men adore; both their Gods & their men are fools.

A white male child of perfect innocence and intelligence makes the most suitable victim.

There are no 'standards of Right'. Ethics is balderdash. Each Star must go on its own orbit. To hell with 'moral principle'; there is no such thing.

The key of joy is disobedience.

There is no grace: there is no guilt: This is the Law: DO WHAT THOU WILT!

Sanity is a compromise.

Oh, how superior is the Eye of Horus to the Mouth of Isis!

Tell the truth, but lead so improbable a life that the truth will never be believed.

When you have proved that God is merely a name for the sex instinct, it appears to me not far to the perception that the sex instinct is God.

Intolerance is evidence of impotence.

The Beast 666 ordains by His authority that every man, and every woman, and every intermediately-sexed individual, shall be absolutely free to interpret and communicate Self by means of any sexual practices soever, whether direct or indirect, rational or symbolic, physiologically, legally, ethically, or religiously approved or no, provided only that all parties to any act are fully aware of all implications and responsibilities thereof, and heartily agree thereto.

I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered — now I have only one doubt left — which of the twain was God?

As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporately, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it.