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If 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'Holbach

Tolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes to religious fanaticism.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Atheism Religious Tolerance
When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon, than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths, or to reject absurdities, and palpable contradictions.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Common Sense Men Opinion
If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Atheist Ignorance Knowledge
The unhappiness of people is due to their ignorance of nature.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Ignorance Nature People
In Nature nothing; is mean or contemptible, and it is only pride, originating in a false idea of our superiority, which causes our contempt for some of her productions. In the eyes of Nature, however, the oyster that vegetates at the bottom of the sea is as dear and perfect as the proud biped who devours it.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Eye Mean Pride
How could the human mind progress, while tormented with frightful phantoms, and guided by men, interested in perpetuating its ignorance and fears?
BARON D'HOLBACH

Ignorance Men Thinking
Man 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'HOLBACH

Bound Man Leave Nature Spirit Vain Work
All 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'HOLBACH

Men Religious World
It is very strange that men should deny a Creator and yet attribute to themselves the power of creating eels.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Creating Eels Men
It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of religion that we shall discover truth, reason and morality.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Atheist Inspirational Life
It is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Men Superstitions Vanity
Can theology give to the mind the ineffable boon of conceiving that which no man is in a capacity to comprehend? Can it procure to its agents the marvellous faculty of having precise ideas of a god composed of so many contradictory qualities?
BARON D'HOLBACH

Giving Ideas Men
The inward persuasion that we are free to do, or not to do a thing, is but a mere illusion. If we trace the true principle of our actions, we shall find, that they are always necessary consequences of our volitions and desires, which are never in our power.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Desire Independent Thinking
Don’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'HOLBACH

Anything Journey Play Say
These principles, universally recognized, are at fault when the question of the existence of God is considered; what has been said of Him is either unintelligible or perfectly contradictory; and for this reason must appear impossible to every man.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Atheist Common Men Sense
The source of man’s unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Animal Ignorance Nature

If 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.

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If 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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