“The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.”
The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night (1885) Terminal Essay: Social Conditions, fn. 13.
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Richard Francis Burton 78
British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, … 1821–1890Related quotes
Source: Drenai series, The King Beyond the Gate, Ch. 12
Context: I never worshipped anything but my sword and my wits; now I suffer for it. But I can take it, for am I not a man?... It is not hard to be a legend, Tenaka. It is what follows when you have to live like one.

“I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.”
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)

Letter to John Adams (27 November 1775)
Context: I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature; and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and, like the grave, cries, “Give, give!” The great fish swallow up the small; and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government. You tell me of degrees of perfection to which human nature is capable of arriving, and I believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances.

All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.
Book II, ch. 4 (trans. Constance Garnett)
General, The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

“I am not an educated man. I never had an opportunity to learn anything except how to fight..”

Evil in Modern Thought: An alternative history of philosophy (2002)

“I have never been convinced there's anything inherently wrong in having fun.”