“Nothing is so catching as the plague; now, fanaticism, no matter of what nature, is only the plague of the human mind.”

Source: Books, Beyond Order (2021), p. 184

As quoted in Voices: A Memoir (1983) by Frederic Prokosch

The Human: Disseminated Primatemaia (p. 9)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

"The voice of the lonely crowd" (2002)
Source: The Second Plane: 14 Responses to September 11
Context: The 20th century, with its scores of millions of supernumerary dead, has been called the age of ideology. And the age of ideology, clearly, was a mere hiatus in the age of religion, which shows no sign of expiry. Since it is no longer permissible to disparage any single faith or creed, let us start disparaging all of them. To be clear: an ideology is a belief system with an inadequate basis in reality; a religion is a belief system with no basis in reality whatever. Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful. It is straightforward — and never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if He cared for humankind, He would never have given us religion.

Statement made in Hanover (1755), quoted in Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole (Cornell University Press, 2018), pp. 113–114

Source: Pretties

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 1

Quoted in Really Reading Gertrude Stein : A Selected Anthology with essays (1989) by Judy Grahn (Crossing Press ISBN 0-895-94380-8, p. 253

Source: The Darkest Pleasure