Civilization is a social plague on the planet, and vices are just as necessary to it as is a virus to disease.

Who is wiser: the man who plants flowers along life's way or the man who makes it bristle with thorns?

Certainly in each social period, youth must be made to venerate the dominant absurdities.

...commerce, which is mistakenly classified among the productive forms of work, ought to be ranked first among the parasitical professions like those of monk, soldier, lawyer etc.

The extension of women's rights is the basic principle of all social progress.

Attractions are proportional to destinies.

The Civilized… murder their children by producing too many of them without being able to provide for their well-being. Morality or theories of false virtue stimulate them to manufacture cannon fodder, anthills of conscripts who are forced to sell themselves out of poverty. This improvident paternity is a false virtue, the selfishness of pleasure.

We must, then, apply the principle of Doubt to Civilization we must doubt its necessity, its excellence, and its permanence.