Aleister Crowley Quotes

I have seen the day, when, if a man made himself ridiculous, the world would laugh at him. But now, everything that is mean, disgusting, and absurd, pleases them but so much the better!

Through tattered clothes, small vices do appear. Robes and furred gowns hide all.

The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.

Hypocrisy is the mother of all evil and racial prejudice is still her favourite child.

Covering up, so far as I can see, is often the accompaniment to far more truly shameful behaviour than stripping off.

Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.

I'm really good at pretending.

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.

We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.

These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness and worship without awareness.

You never see what you want to see, forever playing to the gallery.

The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.

We all lie to each other, present some sort of front.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

The seven blunders that human society commits and cause all the violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles.

It is of great consequences to disguise your inclination, and to play the hypocrite well.

It is better to hide ignorance, but it is hard to do this when we relax over wine.

Away, and mock the time with fairest show. False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

They were the sort of people that lynch Negroes, that mistake hoodlumism for wit, and cunning for intelligence, that attend revivals and fight and fornicate in the bushes afterwards. They were undiluted “Anglo-Saxons. They were the sovereign voter. It was so horrible it seemed unreal.

I cannot adequately express the horror I feel for a man who can be so base as to veil his hypocrisy under the cloak of religion, and state the base falsehood he has done.

Dissimulation creeps gradually into the minds of men.

Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad.

Why so much innuendo, draped like ivy to hide a cesspool, when everyone knew the cesspool was there?

Our civilized world is nothing but a great masquerade. You encounter knights, parsons, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, priests, philosophers and a thousand more: but they are not what they appear - they are merely masks... Usually, as I say, there is nothing but industrialists, businessmen and speculators concealed behind all these masks.