It is a sure criterion of the civilisation of ancient Egypt that the soldiers did not carry arms except on duty, and that the private citizens did not carry them at all.

Men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels, rather than elevated apes.

A day will come when the European god of the nineteenth century will be classed with the gods of Olympus and the Nile.

As a single atom man is an enigma: as a whole he is a mathematical problem. As an individual he is a free agent, as a species the offspring of necessity.

What a state of society is this in which freethinker is a term of abuse, and in which doubt is regarded as sin?

Our enlightened posterity will look back upon us who eat oxen and sheep, just as we look upon cannibals.

One fact must be familiar to all those who have any experience of human nature - a sincerely religious man is often an exceedingly bad man.

If we look into ourselves we discover propensities which declare that our intellects have arisen from a lower form; could our minds be made visible we should find them tailed.

Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.

It may safely be asserted that the art of war will soon be reduced to a simple question of expenditure and credit, and that the largest purse will be the strongest arm.

One book that has influenced the writer very strongly is Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man...It is still an extraordinarily inspiring presentation of human history as one consistent process.

When you know you are doing your very best within the circumstances of your existence applaud yourself!

Patience can't be acquired overnight. It is just like building up a muscle. Every day you need to work on it.

When you can imagine you begin to create and when you begin to create you realize that you can create a world that you prefer to live in, rather than a world that you're suffering in.

You don't have to be a drug addict to care for your mind.

It's always helpful to learn from your mistakes because then your mistakes seem worthwhile.

The hater hates not for the sake of hatred but because he wants to drive away from his country the hated being or beings.

You should see ballerinas' feet. They don't have nails. You see beauty, but it's unbelievable pain - with a 40-year pension! That's it, and then life is really finished.

A snarky but accurate description of monetary policy over the past five years is that the Federal Reserve successfully replaced the technology bubble with a housing bubble

[Jonathan Edwards] he has to be engaged with on this issue if you're writing about Calvinism as I am in this book.

It's like I'm stuck in a time bubble. Memories keep coming back, and of course, memories are a huge part of literature and cinema, from "Stand by Me" to "Blade Runner."