Crowley

“One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad.” 

“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.” 
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies

“The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.” 
― Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

“Having to talk destroys the symphony of silence.” 
― Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend

“Every one interprets everything in terms of his own experience. If you say anything which does not touch a precisely similar spot in another man's brain, he either misunderstands you, or doesn't understand you at all.” 
― Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend

“The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and wilfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.” 
― Aleister Crowley, Magick: Liber ABA

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” 
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law

“Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will.” 
― Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice

“Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.” 
― Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

“Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life....” 
― Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

“It is the mark of the mind untrained to take its own processes as valid for all men, and its own judgments for absolute truth.” 
― Aleister Crowley, Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law

“Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.” 
― Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

“The Way of Mastery is to break all the rules—but you have to know them perfectly before you can do this; otherwise you are not in a position to transcend them.” 
― Aleister Crowley, Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law

“Love is the law, love under will.” 
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law

“I've often thought that there isn't any "I" at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion.” 
― Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend

Understanding that Stability is Change, and Change Stability, that Being is Becoming, and Becoming Being, is the Key to the Golden Palace of this Law.
—"De Lege Libellum"

Every Star has its own Nature, which is "Right" for it. We are not to be missionaries, with ideal standards of dress and morals, and such hard-ideas. We are to do what we will, and leave others to do what they will. We are infinitely tolerant, save of intolerance.
—New Commentary, II:57

I admit that my visions can never mean to other men as much as they do to me. I do not regret this. All I ask is that my results should convince seekers after truth that there is beyond doubt something worth while seeking, attainable by methods more or less like mine. I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics, or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle. 
—The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Ch. 66

When you can [help others] as it should be done, without embarrassment, false shame, with your whole heart in your words—do it simply, to sum up—you will find yourself way up on the road to that royal republic which is the ideal of human society.
—Magic Without Tears

There is a fourth kind of atheist, not really an atheist at all. He is but a traveller in the Land of No God, and knows that it is but a stage on his journey—and a stage, moreover, not far from the goal....This atheist, not in-being but in-passing, is a very apt subject for initiation. He has done with the illusions of dogma. From a Knight of the Royal Mystery he has risen to understand with the members of the Sovereign Sanctuary that all is symbolic; all, if you will, the Jugglery of the Magician. He is tired of theories and systems of theology and all such toys; and being weary and anhungred and athirst seeks a seat at the Table of Adepts, and a portion of the Bread of Spiritual Experience, and a draught of the wine of Ecstasy.
—Gematria

By my side as I write wallows in exhaustion following an age of torment one who did not understand that it is a thousand times better to die than to break the least tittle of a magical oath.
—Gematria

Only when we consciously attain to the enjoyment of life as a sacrament, only when the universe is understood as being a vast replica of our own nature, do we accept the cross, and hail death as the culmination and prize of life.
—The General Principles of Astrology

[T]he essential of all magical work: the uniting of the microcosm with the macrocosm. 
—The Book of Thoth ("Hierophant")

Salvation, whatever salvation may mean, is not to be obtained on any reasonable terms.
—The Book of Thoth ("The Fool")

Ah! Mr. Waite, the world of Magic is a mirror, wherein who sees muck is muck.
—The Goetia

It is extraordinary how the formula of Hermes Trismegistus holds throughout; Magick is but the extension of the microcosm in the macrocosm. And as the macrocosm is the greater, it follows that what one does by magick is to attune oneself with the Infinite. 
—"The Revival of Magick"

The mystic attainment may be defined as the Union of the Soul with God, or as the soul's realization of Itself, or— but there are fifty phrases to define the attainment. Whether you are a Christian or a Buddhist, a Theist or an Atheist, the attainment of this state is as open to you as is nightmare, or madness, or intoxication.
—"The Attainment of Happiness"

...if it must be that one's most sacred shrine be profaned, let it be the clean assault of laughter rather than the slimy smear of sanctimoniousness!
—Magick Without Tears, Ch. 44

Some writers suppose that in the ancient rites of Eleusis the High Priest publicly copulated with the High Priestess. Were this so, it would be no more “indecent” than it is “blasphemous” for the priest to make bread and wine into the body and blood of God. True, the Protestants say that it is blasphemous; but a Protestant is one to whom all things sacred are profane, whose mind being all filth can see nothing in the sexual act but a crime or a jest, whose only facial gestures are the sneer and the leer. Protestantism is the excrement of human thought, and accordingly in Protestant countries art, if it exist at all, only exists to revolt. 
—"Energized Enthusiasm"

I see thee, Woman, thou standest alone, High Priestess art thou unto Love at the Altar of Life. And Man is the Victim therein. Beneath thee, rejoicing, he lies; he exalts as he dies, burning up in the breath of thy kiss. Yea, star rushes flaming to star; the blaze bursts, splashes the skies.
—Every Woman is a Star

I certainly have no intention of "holding you down" to "a narrow path of work" or any path. All I can do is to help you to understand clearly the laws of your own nature, so that you may go ahead without extraneous influence. It does not follow that a plan that I have found successful in my own case will be any use to you. That is another cardinal mistake of most teachers. One must have become a Master of the Temple to annihilate one's ego. Most teachers, consciously or unconsciously, try to get others to follow in their steps. I might as well dress you up in my castoff clothing!
—Magick Without Tears, ch. 17

Truth teaches understanding, freedom develops will, experience confers resourcefulness, independence inspires self-confidence. Thereby success becomes certain.
—"On the Education of Children"

It is not actually wrong to regard me as a teacher, but it is certainly liable to mislead; fellow-student, or, if you like, fellow-sufferer, seems a more appropriate definition.
—Magick Without Tears, Introduction

The central principle of my teaching is to compel the pupil to rely on his own resources, and having thus acquired good judgment and confidence, to develop intelligent initiative.
—The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Ch. 89

We insist from the beginning on the individual character of the work, and upon the necessity of maintaining the objective and sceptical standpoint. You are explicitly warned against reliance upon "authority," even that of the Order itself. Consider my own assets, personal, social, educational, experiential and the rest: don't you see that all I had to do was to put out some brightly-coloured and mellifluous lie, and avoid treading on too many toes, to have had hundreds of thousands of idiots worshipping me?
—Magick Without Tears, ch. 71

I am as near seventy as makes no matter, and I am still learning with all my might. All my life I have been taught: governesses, private tutors, schools, private and public, the best of the Universities: how little I know! I have traveled all over the world in all conditions, from "grand seigneur," to "holy man;" how little I know!
—Magick Without Tears, ch. 72

But when your teaching is of the disputable kind, explain that too; encourage [the student] to question, to demand a reason and to disagree. Get him to fence with you; sharpen his wits by dialectic; lure him into thinking for himself.

—Magick Without Tears, ch. 72