We’re collaborating with some folk at Ave Satanas Podcast (ASP) and Free Society Satanists to bring you a miniseries looking at Might Is Right — ur-text of Satanism and an infamous work of proto-fascism first published in 1896 by Arthur Desmond a.k.a. “Ragnar Redbeard”.

To be clear: Might Is Right sucks, both as a book and ideology. It’s full of doggerel, bigotry, and contradictions. But we’re gonna talk about it, chapter-by-chapter, from the perspective of modern, anarchist Satanists who feel that racism, misogyny, antisemitism, and tyranny are “bad, actually”.

Livestreams (mostly) take place alternating weeks 9 p.m Eastern / 6 p.m. Pacific, including Friday Aug. 29 (0100 UTC Aug. 30), with podcasts released the following Saturday (Sep. 6), and new recordings taking place every two weeks:

RSS feed: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2383108.rss

(copy and paste the URL into the podcast app of your choice)

Folk who have thoughts on MIR and want to weigh in are welcome to join us on Twitch.

Assuming we can make the technical stuff work, the idea is for us to talk this week about the background of Arthur Desmond and Might Is Right, and why a piece of shit book like that is even worth investigating almost 130 years later.

(Spoiler: Anton LaVey plagiarized it for The Satanic Bible.)

Since we’re springing this on you suddenly, the chapter-by-chapter stuff won’t start until Friday Aug. 22, giving people time to do their reading and weigh-in. The first one will prolly be messy, but also to do some open table-setting about why we are bothering with this project now.

We’re using the mechanically impressive “Authoritative Edition” that Trevor Blake put together and published in 2019, harmonizing and annotating various versions, but nobody else ought to feel obligated to use that one rather than any of the free versions you can find floating around on the Web.

Frankly, if you follow along reading the 1910 edition published by “14 Words Press”, you are in some ways getting the more genuine and relevant version of this rancid fucking text, what it is all about, and it’s cultural significance than Blake’s version which falls all over itself in apologism.

This is not really a fun book to read, and if you haven’t read it before, maybe it’s not worth your while.

However, the fact that is bad actually helps to explain a lot of the stuff you see around you today, and the continuity of shit like incels and “anti-theist” antisemitism is also useful.

* * *

Ep. 1: Chapter 1 “Introductory” (pages 31-47)

1910 begins with “THE LOGIC OF TO-DAY” poem

(Might was right when Caesar bled / upon the stones of Rome, / Might was right when Joshua led / his hordes o’er Jordan’s foam, / And Might was right when German troops / poured down through Paris gay; / It’s the Gospel of the Ancient World / and the Logic of To-Day.) 

• Jack: The modern day Soundcloud rapper…..Ragnar Redbeard!

1927 drops this and begins

OPPORTUNITIES A man’s opportunities are never exhausted so long as other men (who are not his friends) possess millions of acres and thousands of tons of gold. 

• Jack: So…. there IS honor among thieves after all!

1896 begins

Open your eyes that you may hear, O! men of mildewed minds and listen to me ye laborious millions! For I stand forth to challenge the wisdom of the world; to interrogate the “laws” of man and of “Good.” I request reasons for your Golden Rule and ask the why and wherefore of your Ten Commands. Before none of your printed idols do I bend in acquiescence and he who saith “thou shalt” to me is my mortal foe. I demand proof over all things, and accept (with reservations) even that which is true.

• But that is preceded by:
  Proclaiming, “Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong.”
• It is followed by:
  I dip my forefinger in the watery blood of your impotent mob-redeemer (your Divine Democrat—your Hebrew Madman) and write over his thorn-torn brow “The true prince of Evil—the king of the Slaves!
  • Jack: This to me read like a B sided Science Fiction movie intro. I couldnt get the image of MST3K ripping this intro to shreds. 

Prologue

As mentioned in the above, this part has always been in the book but moved around some. In the 1896 scanned edition on Internet archive, it’s at the back almost like a loose pamphlet inset, but there’s no notes from the Trevor Blake edition about why.

Ragnar says that if you’re poor, then you just need to rob others because that’s the source of wealth:

• OPPORTUNITIES: A man’s opportunities are never exhausted so long as other men (who are not his friends) possess millions of acres and thousands of tons of gold.

Another big idea of Ragnar’s is that fighting is happening all the time:

• ALL ELSE IS ERROR: The natural world is a world of war; the natural man is a warrior; the natural law is tooth and claw. All else is error. A condition of combat everywhere exists. We are born into a perpetual conflict.

This is not amoralism that Ragnar will actually be able to sustain:

• THE VICTOR GETS THE GOLD: Virtue is rewarded in this world, remember. Natural law makes no false judgments. Its decisions are true and just, even when dreadful.

Ragnar treats this all as pathetic, effeminate, incompetent — but Christianity conquered the world, not Norse paganism:

• Behold the crucifix, what does it symbolize? / Pallid incompetence hanging on a tree

What if someone could win more stuff and hold it longer with compromises and splitting the spoils? Would that be immoral?

• It is might against might, remember, by land and sea, man against man, money against money, brains against brains, and — everything to the winner.

Ragnar explicitly sees women as a possession and sign of wealth because he does not see them as people:

• …all banners are waving for WOMEN and GOLD.

Section 1

This is the first place that Anton Lavey and Diane Hegarty plagiarized at length, almost word-for-word, to start off the “Book of Satan” portion of The Satanic Bible.

Some of the writing/ideas are compelling; you can see why LaVey pillaged it:

Death! I say death to every lie! I deny all things! I question all things!

Section 2

This section that makes the observation people inherit and are indoctrinated by what ethics and morals are, but does not stop to question whether bigotries could be inherited value systems, too.

“Natural law makes no false judgments”, so what’s wrong with these moral codes if they’re dominant?

• How is it that “men of light and leading” hardly ever call in question the manufactured “moral codes,” under which our once vigorous Northern race is slowly and surely eating out its heart in peaceful inaction and laborious dry-rot? 

Sounds good: 

• Although the average man has taken no part in manufacturing moral codes and statute laws, yet how he obeys them with dog-like submissiveness? He is trained to obedience, like oxen are broken to the yoke of their masters. He is a born thrall habituated from childhood to be governed by others. 

Is there a mouse in this motherfucker’s pocket? And how does “executive of mob” make sense?

• We are sick unto nausea of the “good Lord Jesus,” terror-stricken under the executive of priest, mob and proconsul. We are tired to death of “Equality.” 

Banger line, but are devils good here or bad?

• Gods are at a discount, devils are in demand.

Section 3

You could easily see a contemporary anti-theist atheist saying these sorts of things about Christianity, but probably substituting “Old Testament” or “Abrahamic” in the place of “”Semitic” or “Hebrew” to make the same criticisms.

How does Ragnar define evil here to get here? 

• The living forces of evil are to be found in the living ideals of to-day.

Just straight up racism: 

• If the all-conquering race to which we belong, is not to irretrievably dwindle into multitudinous nothingness, (like the inferior herds it has outdistanced or enslaved) then it is essential that the Semitic spider webs (so astutely woven for ages into the brains of our chiefs) be remorselessly torn out by the very roots, even though the tearing out process be both painful and bloody. / If we would retain and defend our inherited manhood, we must not permit ourselves to be forever rocked to repose, with the sweet lullabies of eastern idealisms. Too long we have been hypnotized by the occult charm of Hebrew Utopianism. If we continue to obey the insidious spell that has been laid upon us, we will wake up some dread morning with the gates of hell — “of hell upon earth” yawning wide open, to close again upon us forever.

Section 4

The authoritative edition says there is no section 4, but then the 1927 edition I was reading online did have it, so a later publisher may have corrected it.

As an explanation for why, the 1896 scan looks like this, so they may just have gotten lost in the numbering while typesetting since page numbers and section numbers look the same.

Section 5

There is an incredible hubris to this section about how everyone else who came before built politics and philosophies on assumptions, but Ragnar is going to purify his racial mind and extinguish all the contagion that prevents rationality.

LaVey and The Satanic Bible pilfer from this at length, and Lucien Greaves of The Satanic Temple references it, which both parties call “poetry”. (Greaves in 2013: “Anton LaVey did not endorse the book in its entirety, but enjoyed its florid anti-God, anti-Christ poetry and its attempt at a strictly naturalistic philosophy — which to the author of MIR was a Social Darwinistic view. LaVey saw the book as a great leaping off point and pillaged full passages to construct The Satanic Bible.”) (Gilmore in 2019: “Might is Right is a book of action and not belief. It is poetry, not a platform.”)

How else is one to take this?:

• It is time they were firmly planted upon an enduring foundation. This can never be accomplished until the racial mind has first been thoroughly cleansed and drastically disinfected of its depraved, alien, and demoralizing concepts of right and wrong. In no human brain can sufficient space be found, for the relentless logic of hard fact, until all pie-existent delusions have been finally annihilated.

Makes sense: 

• Too long the dead hand has been permitted to sterilize living thought—too long, right and wrong, good and evil, have been inverted by false prophets. In the days that are at hand, neither creed nor code must be accepted upon authority, human, superhuman or ‘divine.’ … Religions and constitutions and all arbitrary principles, every mortal theorem, must be deliberately put to the question:” No moral dogma must be taken for granted—no standard of measurement deified. There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are all the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy.
  • What he means is in the ellipses: (Morality and conventionisms are for subordinates.)

This is what TST’s seventh tenet is actually referencing: 

• Wherever, therefore, a lie has built unto itself a throne, let it be assailed without pity and without regret, for under the domination of a falsehood, no nation can permantly prosper  Let established sophisms be dethroned, rooted out, burnt and destroyed, for they are a standing menace to all true nobility of thought and action (emphasis added). Whatever alleged “truth” is proven by results, to be but an empty fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage.
  • Given Doug Misicko’s history with Shane Bugee and the 2003 Mike Hunt publication of MIR, it seems implausible that Misicko has not been trying to make a point that “Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought” is still a MIR reference, and no one can stop him.

Ostensibly this is about lies: 

• There is only one way to deal with them. Cut them out, to the very core, just as cancers are. Exterminate them root and branch, or they will surely eat us all up. We must annihilate them, or they will us. Half and half remedies are of no avail.

The author says sin doesn’t exist but continued to believe in it in regards to nature or natural law: 

• In nature the wages of sin is always death. Nature does not love the wrong-doer, but endeavors in every possible way to destroy him. 

“Jews and Christs” really doesn’t hold up as equivalent categories, but also by what standard is the author defining “degenerates”? And for all the shit-talking about useless martyrs, why have Jews and Christians who venerate their martyrs been so successful at surviving and pulling their past forward to the present while Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, etc., were crushed?: 

• Her [Nature’s] curse is on the brow of the “meek and lowly.” Her blessing is on the very hearts blood, of the strong and the brave. Only Jews and Christs and other degenerates, think that rejuvenation can ever come through law and prayer. “All the tears of all the martyrs” might just as well have never been shed.

Section 6

Ragnar is worried about the threat to liberty by the menace of deception, but then seems to tell a positive story about using deception to overcome someone strong. Is that bad or good?

“WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY” is, weirdly and unironically, the most direct answer to this: 

• It is only slaves that are” born into contracts, signed and sealed by their progenitors. The freeman is born free, lives free, and dies free. He is (even though living in an artificial civilization) above all laws, all constitutions, all theories of right and wrong. He supports and defends them of course, as long as they suit his own end, but if they don’t, then he annihilates them by the easiest and most direct method.
  • Also, none of us were born free. We were born infants, utterly reliant on the kindness and generosity of (to us) strangers who chose to sustain and raise us with no guarantee we ever would be able or willing to reciprocate that gift.

This story argues against the supposed point of the whole rest of the book; a strong warrior lost not due to a lack of martial prowess but because someone lied to him and tricked him: 

• One of Columbus’s lieutenants in the West Indies, captured a Carib chief by means of a subtle stratagem….
  • The manacles described are mainly for a moralizing point, but by Redbeard’s standards, isn’t this just someone using tools to be able to invoke force most effectively for their own ends?

Section 7

This is against believing stuff just because something is old or handed down, and fair enough, but how is this applicable to, say, Judaism, which has thousands of years of history of arguing about what has been handed down?

The author admits morality is in the service of the strong, so what else is his problem with these tools except that he is not powerful enough to abrogate them?: 

• All moral principles, therefore, are the servitors, not the masters of the strong. Power made moral codes, and Power abrogates them.

Answer to the above: 

• A man is under no obligation to obey anything or anybody. It is only serving-men that must obey, because they are caitiffs [contemptible, wretched] by birth, breeding, and condition. Morals are only required in an immoral community, that is to say a community held in a state of conquest.

In this quote, the author seems pretty clearly to envision himself as one of the ten and not one of the ten millions — but if that were so, why is he whining about morality instead of changing it? Why is not actually the master he claims he is?: 

• Mastership is right—Mastership is natural—Mastership is eternal. But only for those who cannot overthrow it, and trample it beneath their hoofs. Is it not a fact that in actual life, the ballot-box votes of ten million subjective personalities are as thistle down in the balance, when weighed against the far seeing thought, and material prowess of, say, ten strong, silent men?

Section 8

There are some good lines in this final section, but it is a microcosm of Might Is Right in that as a whole and one thing to the next, it’s a big fucking mess that can’t see past its writer’s own nose.

This is such a promising beginning:

• It is notorious, universally so, that the blackest falsehoods are ever decked out in the most brilliant and gorgeous regalia. Clearly, therefore it is the brave man’s duty to regard all sacred things, all legal things, all constitutional things, all holy things, with more than usual suspicion.

Weird: 

• Belief is a flunkey, a feminine—Doubt is a creator, a master.

This would be very cool if you did not know Redbeard includes “and this is good” along with this observation: 

• The mission of Power is to control and exploit the powerless, for to be powerless is to be criminal. 

Phrase “human animals” spotted, but also, the idea that nothing changes seems especially odd to suggest in the late 19th century: 

• And there is nothing in the most modern social developements, (of these deedless days,) to warrant any belief that this ancient and natural division of human animals, into castes of superiors and inferiors, sovereigns and serfs, can ever be dispensed with. The slave-owners whip cracked from the beginning and it will crack till the day of doom. In every kingdom, republic, and empire on earth, we have (in one disguise or another) the master and the slave—the ruler and the ruled. In the course of centuries, names alone have changed, essentials have remained the same. Forms of royalty may alter but kings can never die. There was mastership at the beginning, aud there will be mastership to the end. We build, but as our fathers built. Change is not progress, nor numbers advance.

Then why do these other things persevere? 

• Human rights and wrongs are not determined by Justice, but by Might, Disguise it as you may, the naked sword is still king-maker and king-breaker, as of yore. All other theories are lies and — lures.

“Power is non-moral” — except that the author hates everything except power, and specifically violent power: 

• Only the powerful can be free, and Power is non-moral. Life is real, life is earnest, and neither heaven nor hell its final goal. And love, and joy, and birth, and death, and fate, and strife, shall be forever.

On the other hand, as always, where does this moralizing come from?: 

• Though, the survival of the strongest is the logic of events, yet personal cowardice’ is the great vice of our demoralized age. Cowardice is corroding the brain and blood of our race, but men have learnt to disguise this terrible infirmity, behind the canting whine of “humanity” and “goodness.” Words flow instead of blood, and terrible insults are exchanged, instead of terrible blows. How rich this degenerate world is in small, petty-souled, good-for-nothings, who are forever excusing their infantile ineptitude behind some plausable phrase—some conventional make-believe.

David

• One intentionally good thing from this chapter (can include half-sentence): 
  • I/8: “The mission of Power is to control and exploit the powerless, for to be powerless is to be criminal.”
• Weirdest thing from this chapter (good or bad):
  • I/8: “Belief is a flunkey, a feminine—Doubt is a creator, a master.”
• OK, the really bad one
  • I/2: How is it that “men of light and leading” hardly ever call in question the manufactured “moral codes,” under which our once vigorous Northern race is slowly and surely eating  out its heart in peaceful inaction and laborious dry-rot?
    • This is in the context of the zenith of northern European power the world over.

Jack

• One intentionally good thing from this chapter (can include half-sentence)
  • I/8:“Clearly therefore it is the brave man’s duty to regard all sacred things, all legal things, constitutional things, all holy things with more than usual suspicion.” 
    • Ok, so i read this through the eyes of a satanist. We do like to live by the scientific method. To question authority and look for logic and reason in all facets of life isnt on its face, a bad thing. This was probably the longest passage in the first chapter that i read without cringing….so that should account for something! 
    • Which the very next line in that excerpt is your weirdest thing! So theres that.
• Weirdest thing from this chapter (good or bad)
  • I/1: In this arid wilderness of steel and stone I raise up my voice that you may hear…
  • The whole entire first passage. Denoted by number 1. It reads like a shitty monologue to a bad movie. The flow of the first excerpt doesn’t translate to the others, and only does a half-assed job setting up the rest of Chapter 1. It’s like we stumble upon him mid grumbling at the sidewalk and he has to pivot to the actual material in 2. 
• OK, the really bad one
  • I/8: Strong men are not deterred from pursuing their aim by anything. They go straight to the goal, and that goal is beauty, wealth and material power. The mission of power is to control and exploit the powerless. For to be powerless is to be criminal……. I think we get the point here.
    • While this passage isnt probably the worst of the first chapter, it really gave me the creeps because we see so much of that (for lack of a better term) toxic version of masculinity in the hustle grindset culture of the internet today. Telling men that showing weakness is a sin, to be rooted out and destroyed is gross, and it is doing far more damage to civilization being parroted by these muppets like Andrew Tate and Fresh and Fit. Was Desmond trying to write a how-to guide to get women here?

Sai

• One intentionally good thing from this chapter (can include half-sentence)
  • I/1 P33 – Gods are at a discount, devils are in demand
  • This unironically would make a great tee shirt in metal band type or something.
• Weirdest thing from this chapter (good or bad)
  • I/2:P31 – I demand proof over all things, and accept (with reservations) even that which is true.
  • This is humorously truthful. It’s like he started out being righteous and scientific in a way but then devolved into “okay, I guess I can accept all things that are proven true, but I’m not going to like it!”
• OK, the really bad one
  • I/3: P36 – If the all-conquering race to which we belong, is not to irretrievably dwindle into multitudinous nothingness, (like the inferior herds it has outdistanced or enslaved), then it is essential that the Semitic spider-webs (show astutely woven for ages into the brains of our chiefs) be remorselessly, torn out by the very roots, even though the tearing out process be both painful and bloody”
  • This speaks for itself,  it we are starting strong with the antisemitism here and I hate it. 

Felo

• One intentionally good thing from this chapter (can include half-sentence)
  • “the average man feels in his heart that nearly all political and religious conventionalisms are dynamic deceits”
  • “Religions and constitutions and all arbitrary principles, every mortal theorem, must be deliberately put to the question. No moral dogma must be taken for granted — no standard of measurement deified. There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are all the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy.”
  • “Disguise it as you may, the naked sword is still king-maker and king-breaker”
• Weirdest thing from this chapter (good or bad):
  • “We are sick unto nausea of the “good Lord Jesus,” terror-stricken under the executive of priest, mob and proconsul.”
    Is it giving Redbeard too much credit to wonder if this is a swipe at Kierkegaard?
  • “Fear God, bridle the spirit, and obey the law, is advice most excellent, as from a philosopher to a yokel, but when directed in all earnestness at a man of inherent might, he smiles to himself in silent scorn.”
    Wanna know how I got these scars?
  • “if a people place implicit faith in what philosophers teach them, they are liable to be duped.”
    But not MY philosophy!! 
• OK, the really bad one
  • “If the all-conquering race to which we belong, is not to irretrievably dwindle into multitudinous nothingness, (like the inferior herds it has outdistanced or enslaved) then it is essential that the Semitic spider webs (so astutely woven for ages into the brains of our chiefs) be remorselessly torn out by the very roots, even though the tearing out process be both painful and bloody.”
  • “How is it that “men of light and leading” hardly ever call in question the manufactured “moral codes,” under which our once vigorous Northern race is slowly and surely eating out its heart in peaceful inaction and laborious dry-rot?
    

Stuff plagiarized for The Satanic Bible

Basically, this is the part that had the biggest impact on TSB. Twenty-six (26) of the excerpts come from this portion (versus twenty [20] for chapter II and five [5] for chapter III). MIR text with with plagiarism highlighted.

MIR 1927 Chapter / Section #	Might Is Right	The Satanic Bible	TSB Book of Satan
Chapter I Section 1	In this arid wilderness of steel and stone I raise up my voice that you may hear. To the East and to the West I beckon. To the North and to the South I show a sign — Proclaiming “Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong.”	In this arid wilderness of steel and stone I raise up my voice that you may hear. To the East and to the West I beckon. To the North and to the South I show a sign proclaiming: Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong!	Book I No. 1
Chapter I Section 1	Open your eyes that you may hear, O! men of mildewed minds and listen to me, ye laborious millions!	Open your eyes that you may see, Oh men of mildewed minds, and listen to me ye bewildered millions!	Book I No. 2
Chapter I Section 1	For I stand forth to challenge the wisdom of the world; to interrogate the “laws” of man and of “God.”	For I stand forth to challenge the wisdom of the world; to interrogate the “laws” of man and of “God”!	Book I No. 3
Chapter I Section 1	I request reasons for your Golden Rule and ask the why and wherefore of your Ten Commands.	I request reason for your golden rule and ask the why and wherefore of your ten commandments.	Book I No. 4
Chapter I Section 1	Before none of your printed idols do I bend in acquiescence and he who saith “thou shalt” to me is my mortal foe.	Before none of your printed idols do I bend in acquiescence, and he who saith “thou shalt” to me is my mortal foe!	Book I No. 5
Chapter I Section 1	I dip my forefinger in the watery blood of your impotent mad-redeemer (your Divine Democrat — your Hebrew Madman) and write over his thorn-torn brow, “The true prince of Evil — the king of the Slaves!”	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 slaves!	Book I No. 6
Chapter I Section 1	No hoary falsehood shall be a truth to me — no cult or dogma shall encramp my pen.	No hoary falsehood shall be a truth to me; no stifling dogma shall encramp my pen!	Book I No. 7
Chapter I Section 1	I break away from all conventions. Alone, untrammeled.	I break away from all conventions that do not lead to my earthly success and happiness.	Book I No. 8
Chapter I Section 1	I raise up in stern invasion the standard of Strong.	I raise up in stern invasion the standard of the strong!	Book I No. 9
Chapter I Section 1	I gaze into the glassy eye of your fearsome Jehovah, and pluck him by the beard — I uplift a broad-axe and split open his worm-eaten skull.	I gaze into the glassy eye of your fearsome Jehovah, and pluck him by the beard; I uplift a broad-axe, and split open his worm-eaten skull!	Book I No. 10
Chapter I Section 1	I blast out the ghastly contents of philosophic whited sepulchres and laugh with sardonic wrath.	I blast out the ghastly contents of philosophically whited sepulchers and laugh with sardonic wrath!	Book I No. 11
Chapter I Section 1	Behold the crucifix, what does it symbolize? Pallid incompetence hanging on a tree.	Behold the crucifix; what does it symbolize? Pallid incompetence hanging on a tree.	Book II No. 1
Chapter I Section 1	Then reaching up the festering and varnished facades of your haughtiest moral dogmas, I write thereon in letters of blazing scorn: — “Lo and behold, all this is fraud!” [Section break] I deny all things! I question all things!	I question all things. As I stand before the festering and varnished facades of your haughtiest moral dogmas, I write thereon in letters of blazing scorn: Lo and behold; all this is fraud!	Book II No. 2
Chapter I Section 1	And yet! And yet! — Gather around me O! ye death-defiant, and the earth itself shall be thine, to have and to hold.	Gather around me, Oh! ye death-defiant, and the earth itself shall be thine, to have and to hold!	Book II No. 3
Chapter I Section 3	Too long the dead hand has been permitted to sterilize living thought	Too long the dead hand has been permitted to sterilize living thought!	Book II No. 4
Chapter I Section 3	— too long, right and wrong, good and evil, have been inverted by false prophets.	Too long right and wrong, good and evil have been inverted by false prophets!	Book II No. 5
Chapter I Section 3	In the days that are at hand, neither creed nor code must be accepted upon authority, human, superhuman or ‘divine.’ (Morality and conventionalism are for subordinates.) Religions and constitutions and all arbitrary principles, every mortal theorem, must be deliberately put to the question. No moral dogma must be taken for granted — no standard of measurement deified. There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are all the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy.	No creed must be accepted upon authority of a “divine” nature. Religions must be put to the question. No moral dogma must be taken for granted – no standard of measurement deified. There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy!	Book II No. 6
Chapter I Section 3	He that is slow to believe anything and everything is of great understanding, for belief in one false principle, is the beginning of all unwisdom.	He that is slow to believe anything and everything is of great understanding, for belief in one false principle is the beginning of all unwisdom.	Book II No. 7
Chapter I Section 3	The chief duty of every new age is to up-raise new men to determine its liberties, to lead it towards material success — to rend (as it were) the rusty padlocks and chains of dead custom that always prevent healthy expansion. Theories and ideals and constitutions, that may have meant life and hope, and freedom, for our ancestors, may now mean destruction, slavery and dishonor to us.	The chief duty of every new age is to upraise new men to determine its liberties, to lead it towards material success – to rend the rusty padlocks and chains of dead custom that always prevent healthy expansion. Theories and ideas that may have meant life and hope and freedom for our ancestors may now mean destruction, slavery, and dishonor to us!	Book II No. 8
Chapter I Section 3	As environments change no human ideal standeth sure.	As environments change, no human ideal standeth sure!	Book II No. 9
Chapter I Section 3	Wherever, therefore, a lie has built unto itself a throne, let it be assailed without pity and without regret, for under the domination of a falsehood, no nation can permanently prosper.	Whenever, therefore, a lie has built unto itself a throne, let it be assailed without pity and without regret, for under the domination of an inconvenient falsehood, no one can prosper.	Book II No. 10
Chapter I Section 3	Let established sophisms be dethroned, rooted out, burnt and destroyed, for they are a standing menace to all true nobility of thought and action.	Let established sophisms be dethroned, rooted out, burnt and destroyed, for they are a standing menace to all true nobility of thought and action!	Book II No. 11
Chapter I Section 3	Whatever alleged “truth” is proven by results, to be but an empty fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage.	Whatever alleged “truth” is proven by results to be but an empty fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage!	Book II No. 12
Chapter I Section 3	The most dangerous of all enthroned lies is the holy, the sanctified, the privileged lie — the lie that “everybody” believes to be a model truth. It is the fruitful mother of all other popular errors and delusions. It is hydra-headed. It has a thousand roots. It is a social cancer.	The most dangerous of all enthroned lies is the holy, the sanctified, the privileged lie – the lie everyone believes to be a model truth. It is the fruitful mother of all other popular errors and delusions. It is a hydra-headed tree of unreason with a thousand roots. It is a social cancer!	Book II No. 13
Chapter I Section 3	The lie that is known to be a lie is half eradicated, but the lie that even intelligent persons regard as a sacred fact — the lie that has been inculcated around a mother’s knee — is more dangerous to contend against than a creeping pestilence.	The lie that is known to be a lie is half eradicated, but the lie that even intelligent persons accept as fact – the lie that has been inculcated in a little child at its mother’s knee – is more dangerous to contend against than a creeping pestilence!	Book II No. 14
Chapter I Section 3	Popular lies have ever been the most potent enemies of personal liberty. There is only one way to deal with them. Cut them out, to the very core, just as cancers are. Exterminate them root and branch, or they will surely eat us all up. We must annihilate them, or they will us.	Popular lies have ever been the most potent enemies of personal liberty. There is only one way to deal with them: Cut them out, to the very core, just as cancers. Exterminate them root and branch. Annihilate them, or they will us!	Book II No. 15