It is very strange that men should deny a Creator and yet attribute to themselves the power of creating eels.
BARON D'HOLBACHIt is very strange that men should deny a Creator and yet attribute to themselves the power of creating eels.
BARON D'HOLBACHThe savage god of the Mexicans cannot be satisfied without thousands of mortals which are immolated to his sanguinary appetite.
BARON D'HOLBACHIt is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.
BARON D'HOLBACHDon’t say anything about this to anybody. Any one would say that I am trying to play the good-natured philosopher. I am neither benefactor nor philosopher, but just a human being, and my charities are the pleasantest expense I have on these journeys.
BARON D'HOLBACHAll religious notions are uniformly founded on authority; all the religions of the world forbid examination, and are not disposed that men should reason upon them.
BARON D'HOLBACHTolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes to religious fanaticism.
BARON D'HOLBACHThe source of man’s unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature.
BARON D'HOLBACHAll religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance and ferocity.
BARON D'HOLBACHMan is the work of nature, he exists in nature, he is subject to its laws, he can not break free, he can not leave even in thought; it is in vain that his spirit wants to soar beyond the bounds of the visible world, he is always forced to return.
BARON D'HOLBACHThe unhappiness of people is due to their ignorance of nature.
BARON D'HOLBACHMen always fool themselves when they give up experience for systems born of the imagination.
BARON D'HOLBACHIf the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.
BARON D'HOLBACHThe Jupiter of the Pagans is a lascivious monster. The Moloch of the Phoenicians is a cannibal. The pure mind of the Christians resolved, in order to appease his fury, to crucify his own son.
BARON D'HOLBACHOnly to finally get the barbarian pleasure to punish them in an excessive way, of no use for himself, without them changing their ways and without their example preventing others from committing crimes.
BARON D'HOLBACHIf we go back to the beginnings of things, we shall always find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that imagination, rapture and deception embellished them; that weakness worships them; that custom spares them; and that tyranny favors them in order to profit from the blindness of men.
BARON D'HOLBACHNature, you say, is totally inexplicable without a God. That is to say, to explain what you understand very little, you have need of a cause which you understand not at all.
BARON D'HOLBACH