Young man, there is America - which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.

I do not regard the late Carl Sagan as any kind of authority. On the contrary, as this book will show, I regard him in many ways as a dubious publicity seeker and careerist, more concerned to maintain his reputation as the brilliant and sceptical representative of hard-headed science than to look squarely and honestly at the facts.

For it all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

I am extremely pleased by Daniel Fincke's article, which says exactly what I SHOULD have said and, to my regret, didn't make sufficiently clear in my Reason Rally speech. The best way to summarise it would be to modify the quotation from Johann Hari. Johann said, "I respect you too much to respect your ridiculous beliefs". From now on, my version will be, "I respect you too much to accept that you really believe anything so ridiculous as you claim. Please either defend those beliefs and explain why they are not ridiculous, or else declare that you do not hold them and publicly disown the church to which you claim loyalty."

Not being able to ban sexuality altogether, Catholicism has tried to reduce it to a mere biological fact, allowing its use in marriage only for procreation. Unlike certain ancient traditions, Catholicism has recognized no higher value, not even a potential one, in the sexual experience taken in itself. There is lacking any basis for its transformation in the interests of a more intense life, to integrate and elevate the inner tension of two beings of different sexes, whereas it is in exactly these terms that one should conceive of a concrete "sacralization" of the union and the effect of a higher influence involved in the rite.

In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.

One persistent strand in utopian thinking, as we have often mentioned, is the feeling that there is some set of principles obvious enough to be accepted by all men of good will, precise enough to give unambiguous guidance in particular situations, clear enough so that all will realize its dictates, and complete enough to cover all problems which actually arise. Since I do not assume that there are such principles, I do not presume that the political realm will whither away. The messiness of the details of a political apparatus and the details of how it is to be controlled and limited do not fit easily into one's hopes for a sleek, simple utopian scheme.

Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them.

How do we remember the parts of our histories we'd rather forget?

Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.

Every civilized human being, whatever his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche. Just as the human body connects us with the mammals and displays numerous relics of earlier evolutionary stages going back to even the reptilian age, so the human psyche is likewise a product of evolution which, when followed up to its origins, show countless archaic traits.

Happy are they that go to bed with grave music like Pythagoras.

A free society is a community of free beings, bound by the laws of sympathy and by the obligations of family love. It is not a society of people released from all moral constraint-for that is precisely the opposite of a society. Without moral constraint there can be no cooperation, no family commitment, no long-term prospects, no hope of economic, let alone social, order.

As medium for reaching understanding, speech acts serve: a) to establish and renew interpersonal relations, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of legitimate social orders; b) to represent states and events, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of existing states of affairs; c) to manifest experiences that is, to represent oneself- whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the subjective world to which he has privileged access.

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

The Idols of Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.

This right which you have, is not founded any more than his upon any quality or any merit in yourself which renders you worthy of it. Your soul and your body are, of themselves, indifferent to the state of boatman or that of duke; and there is no natural bond that attaches them to one condition rather than to another.

When new technologies impose themselves on societies long habituated to older technologies, anxieties of all kinds result.

Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.

Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody.

What is Nature? An encyclopedical, systematic Index or Plan of our Spirit. Why will we content us with the mere catalogue of our Treasures? Let us contemplate them ourselves, and in all ways elaborate and use them.

Plagued by Western habits of either-or, dualistic thinking, we all may fail to understand that race, class and gender interconnect to sustain a corporate ruling class. In the language of African-American essayist bell hooks, they are interlocking systems of oppression. Neither Latina nor Anglo women should yield to the temptation of making a hierarchy of oppressions where battles are fought over whether racism is "worse" than sexism, or class oppression is "deeper" than racism, etc. Instead of hierarchies we need bridges which, after all, exist to make two ends meet.

As Cæsar was at supper the discourse was of death,-which sort was the best. "That," said he, "which is unexpected."

The biology of suffering in intelligent agents is a deep underlying source of existential risk - and one that can potentially be overcome.

Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet.

If you punish a child for being naughty, and reward him for being good, he will do right merely for the sake of the reward; and when he goes out into the world and finds that goodness is not always rewarded, nor wickedness always punished, he will grow into a man who only thinks about how he may get on in the world, and does right or wrong according as he finds either of advantage to himself.

The slaves of developed industrial civilization are sublimated slaves.

Never forget: We are alive within mysteries.

Life is one long struggle in the dark.

He could almost wish he were superstitious. He could then console himself with the thought that the casual meaningless meeting had really been directed by a knowing and purposeful Fate.

It is not Matter itself that is here meant, but the ultimate Cause of things incorporeal, which also existed before Matter. Moreover, it is asserted by Heraclitus: "Death unto souls is but a change to liquid." This Attis, therefore, the intelligible Power, the holder together of things material below the Moon, having intercourse with the pre-ordained Cause of Matter, holds intercourse therewith, not as a male with a female, but as though flowing into it, since he is the same with it.

In the ancient notion of love, on the other hand, there is an element of anxiety. The noble fears the descent to the less noble, is afraid of being infected and pulled down. The "sage" of antiquity does not have the same firmness, the same inner certainty of himself and his own value, as the genius and hero of Christian love.

If the Communists conquered the world, it would be very unpleasant for a while, but not forever. But if the human race is wiped out, that is the end.

A world full of happiness is not beyond human power to create; the obstacles imposed by inanimate nature are not insuperable. The real obstacles lie in the heart of man, and the cure for these is a firm hope, informed and fortified by thought.

Whether or not birth control is eugenic, hygienic, and economic, it is the most revolutionary practice in the history of sexual morals.

Here, lads, we live by the law of the taiga. But even here people manage to live. D'you know who are the ones the camps finish off? Those who lick other men's left-overs, those who set store by the doctors, and those who peach on their mates.

Ha! to forget. How childish! I feel you in my bones. Your silence screams in my ears. You may nail your mouth shut, you may cut out your tongue, can you keep yourself from existing? Will you stop your thoughts.

Rascals are always sociable - more's the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others' company.

I recall an endless desert of infinite and flaming matter. I am burning! I pass through immeasurable, unorganized time, completely done, despairing, crying in the wilderness. And slowly the flame subsides, the womb of matter grows cool, the stone comes alive, breaks open, and a small green leaf uncurls into the air, trembling. It clutches the soil, steadies itself, raises its head and hands, grasps the air, the water, the light, and sucks at the Universe.

Skills are called hidden treasure as they save like a mother in a foreign country.

And this in turn makes it plain that the Right Man problem is a problem of highly dominant people. Dominance is a subject of enormous importance to biologists and zoologists because the percentage of dominant animals - or human beings - seems to be amazingly constant. Bernard Shaw once asked the explorer H. M. Stanley how many other men could take over leadership of the expedition if Stanley himself fell ill; Stanley replied promptly: "One in twenty." "Is that exact or approximate?" asked Shaw. "Exact." And biological studies have confirmed this as a fact. For some odd reason, precisely five per cent - one in twenty - of any animal group are dominant - have leadership qualities. During the Korean War, the Chinese made the interesting discovery that if they separated out the dominant five per cent of American prisoners of war, and kept them in separate compound, the remaining ninety-five per cent made no attempt to escape.

We sometimes imagine, under the influence of Spenglerian philosophy or some other kind of "historical morphology," that we live in a similar age [to the Romans], the last witnesses of a condemned civilization. But condemned by whom? Not by God, but by some supposed "historical laws." For although we do not know any historical laws, we are in fact able of inventing them quite freely, and such laws, once invented, can then be realized in the form of self-fulfilling prophecies.

A bad feeling is a commotion of the mind repugnant to reason, and against nature.