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.

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.

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.

Give yourself a break. When you are alone with your thoughts you should not be arguing.

Even more exasperating than the guy who thinks he knows it all is the one who really does.

Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space.

I'd searched everywhere for this thing called love. I went through life seeking something that would be the ultimate.

And who can deny that Stalin and Mao, not to mention Pol Pot and a host of others, all committed atrocities in the name of Communist ideology that was explicitly atheistic.

God, move that man on into the place where he comprehends what Christianity is.

In the West, you take people at their word.

If you are ever going to achieve as much as you can in a sport, you are going to have to be willing to make a leap of faith to learn how much your body can handle.

I have only been acting since I was about eighteen. I couldn't imagine doing anything else. I don't think there is anything else I could do.

I like to turn things upside down, to watch pictures and situations from another perspective.