Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Aleister Crowley (English Occultist)

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947,) originally Edward Alexander Crowley, was an English writer and ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer.

Born in Royal Leamington Spa, Crowley became interested in the occult while an undergraduate at Cambridge during the ‘magic revival’ of the late 19th century. He was a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn, which William Butler Yeats also joined.

Expelled for extreme practices, Crowley founded his order called the Silver Star and traveled widely. He honed his mountaineer skills on the cliffs in Great Britain before joining the pioneering attempts to climb the K2 and Kanchenjunga. He settled for several years in Sicily with a group of disciples at the Abbey of Thelema near Cefalù. He was expelled from Italy after rumors surfaced of drugs, orgies, and magical ceremonies suggesting the sacrifice of babies. A series of newspaper articles brought Crowley the notoriety he craved in 1921—he liked to be known as ‘the great beast’ and ‘the wickedest man alive.’

Crowley reported mystical experiences in The Book of the Law (1904,) an obscure prose poem. His other works include The Diary of a Drug Fiend (1922) and The Book of Thoth (1944.) His autobiography is The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1969.) He died in relative obscurity in a boarding house in Hastings, Sussex.

Twenty years after his death, Crowley became a figure of fascination in popular culture. John Lennon included his image on the cover of the Beatles’ album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967.) Crowley has since become a prophet to rock stars and hippies.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Aleister Crowley

There is only one really safe, mild, harmless beverage and you can drink as much of that as you like without running the slightest risk, and what you say when you want it is, “Garcon! Un Pernod!”
—Aleister Crowley

I have never grown out of the infantile belief that the universe was made for me to suck.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: The Universe, Universe

To the eyes of a god, mankind must appear as a species of bacteria which multiply and become progressively virulent whenever they find themselves in a congenial culture, and whose activity diminishes until they disappear completely as soon as proper measures are taken to sterilize them.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Humankind, Humanity

The supreme satisfaction is to be able to despise one’s neighbor and this fact goes far to account for religious intolerance. It is evidently consoling to reflect that the people next door are headed for hell.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Neighbors

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
Topics: Faith

Men and women are not free to love decently until they have analyzed themselves completely and swept away every mystery from sex; and this means the acquisition of a profound philosophical theory based on wide reading of anthropology and enlightened practice.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Love

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
Topics: Life, Enjoyment, Living, Change

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Freedom

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
Topics: Morality, Morals

The pious pretence that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Evil

When one walks, one is brought into touch first of all with the essential relations between one’s physical powers and the character of the country; one is compelled to see it as its natives do. Then every man one meets is an individual. One is no longer regarded by the whole population as an unapproachable and uninteresting animal to be cheated and robbed.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Walking

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.
—Aleister Crowley

Love stories are only fit for the solace of people in the insanity of puberty. No healthy adult human being can really care whether so-and-so does or does not succeed in satisfying his physiological uneasiness by the aid of some particular person or not.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Romance

There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: “More money for more work.”
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Authors & Writing

The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Principles

The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Mountains, Nature

Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Morals, Morality

Destiny is an absolutely definite and inexorable ruler. Physical ability and moral determination count for nothing. It is impossible to perform the simplest act when the gods say “no.” I have no idea how they bring pressure to bear on such occasions; I only know that it is irresistible.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Destiny, Goals

The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach.
—Aleister Crowley

Indubitably, Magic is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgment and practice than in any other branch of physics.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Magic

I was asked to memorize what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Education, School

Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Lying, Deception/Lying, Lies

They look for a victim to chivy, and howl him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly imagine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally allowable emotion, it may be an innocent Negro, a Jew like Leo Frank, a harmless half-witted German; a Christ-like idealist of the type of Debs, an enthusiastic reformer like Emma Goldman.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Opinion, Public opinion

Intolerance is evidence of impotence.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: Tolerance

It sometimes strikes me that the whole of science is a piece of impudence; that nature can afford to ignore our impertinent interference. If our monkey mischief should ever reach the point of blowing up the earth by decomposing an atom, and even annihilated the sun himself, I cannot really suppose that the universe would turn a hair.
—Aleister Crowley
Topics: War

Wondering Whom to Read Next?

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *