Sign in with Facebook
“I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.”
― Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
― Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
“The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.”
― Religion: A Dialogue and Other Essays
― Religion: A Dialogue and Other Essays
“The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.”
― Essays and Aphorisms
― Essays and Aphorisms
“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx
― The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx
“Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes.”
― Essays and Aphorisms
― Essays and Aphorisms
World Cinema
— 277 members
— last activity Oct 11, 2012 07:23AM
A place to discuss World Cinema History and your favorites Classic/New International films. A place dedicated to Art of cinema and Creativity all arou ...more
Existentialism
— 931 members
— last activity May 29, 2026 10:36AM
Existentialism is a philosophical movement that claims that individual human beings have full responsibility for creating the meanings of their own li ...more
Philosophy
— 5903 members
— last activity Jun 17, 2026 08:44AM
What is Philosophy? Why is it important? How do you use it? This group looks at these questions and others: ethics, government, economics, skepticism, ...more
White Nights
— 400 members
— last activity Nov 12, 2019 05:45PM
For anyone remotely interested and versed in Russian literature, history and culture. Love Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Akhmatova, Nabokov? ...more
Ali’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Ali’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Ali hasn't connected with his friends on Goodreads, yet.
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Ali
Lists liked by Ali
