{"author":"Anton Szandor LaVey","author_id":"Anton+Szandor+LaVey","total_quotes":24,"quotes":[{"text":"In previous centuries, the Church was the great controller, dictating morality, stifling free expression and posing as conservator of all great art and music. Instead we have TV, doing just as good a job at dictating fashions, thoughts, attitudes, objectives as did the Church, using many of the same techniques but doing it so palatably that no one notices. Instead of ‘sins’ to keep people in line, we have fears of being judged unacceptable by our peers (by not wearing the right shoes, not drinking the right kind of beer, or wearing the wrong kind of deodorant). Coupled with that fear is imposed insecurity concerning our own identities. All answers and solutions to these fears come through the television, and only through television. Only through exposure to TV can the new sins of alienation and ostracism be absolved.","author":"Anton Szandor LaVey","tags":["church","fashion","media","television","trend","trends","tv"],"id":33266,"author_id":"Anton+Szandor+LaVey"},{"text":"Stupidity—The top of the list for Satanic Sins. The Cardinal Sin of Satanism. It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful. Ignorance is one thing, but our society thrives increasingly on stupidity. It depends on people going along with whatever they are told. The media promotes a cultivated stupidity as a posture that is not only acceptable but laudable. Satanists must learn to see through the tricks and cannot afford to be stupid.","author":"Anton Szandor LaVey","tags":["stupidity"],"id":45858,"author_id":"Anton+Szandor+LaVey"},{"text":"A major determining factor by which a superior human can be isolated from his average counterparts is his very isolation—the degree to which he naturally removes himself from mass-media input and stimuli. You cannot be an elitist, a Magician, and be plugged into the system.","author":"Anton Szandor LaVey","tags":["isolation","magic","media","satanism","seclusion","solace","tv"],"id":58325,"author_id":"Anton+Szandor+LaVey"},{"text":"You may be sure of appearing as good, safe, stay-at-home wife material, and he will have the utmost respect for you, as he would for a faithful cook, but he’ll not respect you for the one most important asset every woman who has the wherewithal to employ it—you looks! Vanity not only keeps a woman young, but also gives her something to live for, and if you get saddled to a man who stifles this basic female urge, yet ogles its effects in other women, he could well be knocking years off your life.","author":"Anton Szandor LaVey","tags":["glamoury","occult","witchcraft","witches"],"id":90974,"author_id":"Anton+Szandor+LaVey"},{"text":"Once you familiarize yourself with your tools, you should forget about them. It will only throw you off-balance. In all these ‘rolling shit into little balls’ types who spend hours of time and reams of paper saying nothing, literary masturbators, they concentrate on the vehicle more than what they want to produce. That impedes the end result and defeats the purpose. You must lose consciousness of the medium or mechanics to do the impossible. Like Nijinsky who explained how he gave the impression of hovering in mid-air – ‘I just pause when I get there.’ In a child-like way, real magicians innocently do the simplest thing. The objective is all they think about. I just want to make music the way I hear it. The ends justify the means, and the means become inconsequential.","author":"Anton Szandor LaVey","tags":["magic","satanism","success","working","writing"],"id":110045,"author_id":"Anton+Szandor+LaVey"},{"text":"Anyone without a sense of humor is too pretentious to be a good magician.","author":"Anton Szandor LaVey","tags":["church-of-satan","magic","magician","satan","satanism","the-church-of-satan"],"id":135128,"author_id":"Anton+Szandor+LaVey"},{"text":"As the war progresses, and as population increases to an even more intolerable level stretching resources to impossible lengths, the strong will begin fighting for their very survival. That’s what we’re seeing right now. Society will become more and more stratified into the people who aren’t buying the bullshit in society and those who blindly follow where they are led. Satanists, freethinkers, are a burgeoning minority cause. We have an illness that needs to be recognized just like alcoholism, handicaps, addictive behaviors and AIDS. We suffer from a disease called independence — a pathological aversion to regimentation and institutionalism — which prevents us from getting ‘regular’ jobs and living a ‘normal’ life.","author":"Anton Szandor LaVey","tags":["apocalypse","economics","economy","independence","poor","rich","society"],"id":141059,"author_id":"Anton+Szandor+LaVey"},{"text":"If one cannot gain recognition foranything else, he can rest well with the assurance that he is 'good,' which in most cases equates with 'right'. Were it not for an evil to rail against he might just as well never have been born. Yes, evil is the great savior and sustainer of those whocondemn it most.","author":"Anton Szandor LaVey","tags":["good-and-evil"],"id":142366,"author_id":"Anton+Szandor+LaVey"},{"text":"I dip my forefinger in the watery blood of your impotent mad redeemer, and write over his thorn-torn brow: The true prince of evil- the king of the slaves!","author":"Anton Szandor LaVey","tags":["antichristian","atheism","blasphemy","jesus","satanism"],"id":167481,"author_id":"Anton+Szandor+LaVey"},{"text":"At this stage of the game, I don’t have the time for patience and tolerance. Ten years ago, even five years ago, I would have listened to people ask their questions, explained to them, mollified them. No more. That time is past. Now, as Norman Mailer said in Naked and the Dead, ‘I hate everything which is not in myself.’ If it doesn’t have a direct bearing on what I’m advocating, if it doesn’t augment or stimulate my life and thinking, I don’t want to hear it. It has to add something to my life. There’s no more time for explaining and being ecumenical anymore. No more time. That’s a characteristic I share with the new generation of Satanists, which might best be termed, and has labeled itself in many ways, an ‘Apocalypse culture.’ Not that they believe in the biblical Apocalypse—the ultimate war between good and evil. Quite the contrary. But that there is an urgency, a need to get on with things and stop wailing and if it ends tomorrow, at least we’ll know we’ve lived today. It’s a ‘fiddle while Rome burns’ philosophy. It’s the Satanic philosophy. If the generation born in the 50’s grew up in the shadow of The Bomb and had to assimilate the possibility of imminent self destruction of the entire planet at any time, those born in the 60’s have had to reconcile the inevitability of our own destruction, not through the bomb but through mindless, uncontrolled overpopulation. And somehow resolve in themselves, looking at what history has taught us, that no amount of yelling, protesting, placard waving, marching, wailing—or even more constructive avenues like running for government office or trying to write books to wake people up—is going to do a damn bit of good. The majority of humans have an inborn death wish—they want to destroy themselves and everything beautiful. To finally realize that we’re living in a world after the zenith of creativity, and that we can see so clearly the mechanics of our own destruction, is a terrible realization. Most people can’t face it. They’d rather retreat to the comfort of New Age mysticism. That’s all right. All we want, those few of us who have the strength to realize what’s going on, is the freedom to create and entertain and share with each other, to preserve and cherish what we can while we can, and to build our own little citadels away from the insensitivity of the rest of the world.","author":"Anton Szandor LaVey","tags":["apocalypse","apocalypse-culture","existentialism","isolation","naked-and-the-dead","norman-mailer","satanism"],"id":172052,"author_id":"Anton+Szandor+LaVey"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":24,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}