Facts do not fall in the face of discomfort.

Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

Then, one sunny September morning, the illusion of a personal God that I tried so hard to believe in, exploded over the skies of Manhattan. Even as the ashes and ruin of this horrific act...

An atheist who is a statist is just another theist.

The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of...

The idea of original sin–of guilt with no possibility of innocence, no freedom of choice, no alternatives–inherently militates against self-esteem. The very notion of guilt without volition or responsibility is an assault on reason as...

We are betrayed by our maps of salience. They plot our narratives, identify our enemies and then coat them in distorting layer of loathing and dread. We feel that hunch – withdraw – and then...

To be against rationalization is not the same as to be opposed to reasoning.

When I argue with devout statists, sometimes other voluntaryists tell me that I’m wasting my time, opining that a particular statist is never going to “get it.” I often respond by saying that that’s rarely...

No evidence is powerful enough to force acceptance of a conclusion that is emotionally distasteful.

Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished...

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

Reality is, you know, the tip of an iceberg of irrationality that we’ve managed to drag ourselves up onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal.

The hated man is the result of his hater’s pride rather than his hater’s conscience.

Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful.

Many great ideas, great love stories, and great achievements are born from a healthy irrationality.

Nationalism does nothing but teach you to hate people you never met, and to take pride in accomplishments you had no part in.

If thou really believe in one God,irrationality is subset of thou logic.

l’homme se trouve devant l’irrationnel. Il sent en lui son désir de bonheur et de raison. L’absurde naît de cette confrontation entre l’appel humain et le silence déraisonnable du monde.

The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

It is better to make an irrational noise in a bush than in a desert.

Statism ends with an eye roll.

I am like a machine being driven to excessive rotations: the bearings are incandescing and, in a minute, melted metal will begin to drip and everything will turn to nothing. Quick: get cold water, logic....

We must fight for the freedom of religion; because that is the only way we can stand against irrationality.

When you go with first principles, a giant light goes off in what you think is a city and turns out to be an insane asylum.

Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes,...

Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible.

For også hun hadde hat sin historie, sin lille uregelmæssighet i sit liv (…)Siden sit ulykkelige forhold til en ung fremmed, en ren æventyrer ved navn Johan Nagel, en uanselig dværg, som hadde dukket op...

Empathy is the sunlight to the vampire of culture.

All men are, at times, influenced by inexplicable sentiments. Ideas haunt them in spite of all their efforts to discard them. Prepossessions are entertained, for which their reason is unable to discover any adequate cause....

Who can explain life? Who can understand it? Like cats, we just do what we do.

Sanity is not about confrontation. It’s about filtering. Having a stable and happy life is about saying “no” to crazy people, not about inviting them in and then hoping that confrontations are going to make...

For my part, I prefer the ontological argument, the cosmological argument and the rest of the old stock-in-trade, to the sentimental illogicality that has sprung from Rousseau.

Man: an irrational being who imagines himself to be a rational one.