1890
Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 1
The Treatment of Disease Can Lancet 1909;42:899-912.
D'ailleurs, le suicide régnait alors à Paris; ne doit-il pas être le dernier mot des sociétés incrédules?
Source: A Daughter of Eve (1839), Ch. 7: Suicide.
In an interview for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: "Joseph Heller - Closing Time" (1998) by Ramona Koval http://web.archive.org/web/20000306044602/http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/bwriting/heller.htm <!-- accessdate=2007-08-30 -->
Context: The only wisdom I think I've attained is the wisdom to be skeptical of other people's ideology and other people's arguments. I tend to be a skeptic, I don't like dogmatic approaches by anybody. I don't like intolerance and a dogmatic person is intolerant of other people. It's one of the reasons I keep a distance from all religious beliefs. I think in this country and in Australia too there's a late intolerance in most religions, an intolerance, a part that could easily become persecutions.
We have some ultra-orthodox Jewish sects here in New York and I fear them as much as I would fear a Nazi organisation.
Source: The Meaning of Culture (1929), pp. 27-28
Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 19 (p. 195)
Source: Multi-Secularism: A New Agenda, (2014), p. 338
1940s, "Autobiographical Notes" (1949)
Context: Even when I was a fairly precocious young man the nothingness of the hopes and strivings which chases most men restlessly through life came to my consciousness with considerable vitality. Moreover, I soon discovered the cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully covered up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today. By the mere existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. Moreover, it was possible to satisfy the stomach by such participation, but not man in so far as he is a thinking and feeling being. As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every child by way of the traditional education-machine. Thus I came—despite the fact that I was the son of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents—to a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude towards the convictions which were alive in any specific social environment—an attitude which has never again left me, even though later on, because of a better insight into the causal connections, it lost some of its original poignancy.
“And he's crossing the road,
He's picking up his Daily…Star”
"Begging" (with Carl Barat)
Lyrics and poetry
