“Given the nature of spiders, webs are inevitable. And given the nature of human beings, so are religions. Spiders can't help making fly-traps, and men can't help making symbols. That's what the human brain is there for - the turn the chaos of given experience into a set of manageable symbols.”

“We neither encourage nor discourage. We accept it. Accept it as we accept that spider web up there on the cornice. Given the nature of spiders, webs are inevitable. And given the nature of human beings, so are religions. Spiders can't help making symbols. That's what the human brain is there for - to turn the choad of given experience into a set of manageable symbols.”

“That’s what the human brain is there for—to turn the chaos of given experience into a set of manageable symbols. Sometimes the symbols correspond fairly closely to some of the aspects of the external reality behind our experience; then you have science and common sense. Sometimes, on the contrary, the symbols have almost no connection with external reality; then you have paranoia and delirium. More often there’s a mixture, part realistic and part fantastic; that’s religion.”

“Our vanity makes us exaggerate the importance of human life; the individual is nothing; Nature cares only for the species.”

“We can never dispense with language and the other symbol systems; for it is by means of them, and only by their means, that we have raised ourselves above the brutes, to the level of human beings. But we can easily become the victims as well as the beneficiaries of these systems. We must learn how to handle words effectively; but at the same time we must preserve and, if necessary, intensify our ability to look at the world directly and not through that half opaque medium of concepts, which distorts every given fact into the all too familiar likeness of some generic label or explanatory abstraction.”

“Human beings act in a great variety of irrational ways, but all of them seem to be capable, if given a fair chance, of making a reasonable choice in the light of available evidence. Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality. But today, in the world's most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors.”

“You're assuming,' said Dr. Robert, 'that the brain producesconsciousness. I'm assuming that it transmits consciousness. And myexplanation is no more farfetched than yours. How on earth can a set ofevents belonging to one order be experienced as a set of events belongingto an entirely different and incommensurable order? Nobody has thefaintest idea. All one can do is to accept the facts and concoct hypotheses.And one hypothesis is just about as good, philosophically speaking, asanother. You say that the moksha-medicine does something to the silentareas of the brain which causes them to produce a set of subjective eventsto which people have given the name 'mystical experience.' I say that themoksha-medicine does something to the silent areas of the brain whichopens some kind of neurological sluice and so allows a larger volume ofMind with a large 'M' to flow into your mind with a small 'm.' You can'tdemonstrate the truth of your hypothesis, and I can't demonstrate the truthof mine. And even if you could prove that I'm wrong, would it make anypractical difference?”