Science offends the modesty of all real women. It makes them feel as though it were an attempt to peek under their skin--or, worseyet, under their dress and ornamentation!
In certain pious people I have found a hatred of reason, and have been favourably disposed to them for it: their bad intellectual conscience was at least exposed by that!
Christianity in particular should be dubbed a great treasure-chamber of ingenious consolations, such a store of refreshing, soothing, deadening drugs has it accumulated within itself.
Heroism--that is the disposition of a man who aspires to a goal compared to which he himself is wholly insignificant. Heroism is the good will to self-destruction.
The transition from Religion to Scientific contemplation is a violent, dangerous leap, which is not to be recommended. In order to make this transition, art is far rather to be employed to relieve the mind overburdened with emotions. Out of the illogical comes much good. It is so firmly rooted in the passions, in language, in art, in religion, and generally in everything which gives value to life. It is only the naive people who can believe that the nature of man can be changed into a purely logical one. We have yet to learn that others can suffer, and this can never be completely learned.
I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.