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'HOLBACHThe savage god of the Mexicans cannot be satisfied without thousands of mortals which are immolated to his sanguinary appetite.
More Baron d'Holbach Quotes
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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 -
The Jehovah of the Jews is a suspicious tyrant, who breathes nothing but blood, murder, and carnage, and who demands that they should nourish him with the vapours of animals.
BARON D'HOLBACH -
If the ministers of the Church have often permitted nations to revolt for Heaven’s cause, they never allowed them to revolt against real evils or known violencess. It is from Heaven that the chains have come to fetter the minds of mortals.
BARON D'HOLBACH -
The savage god of the Mexicans cannot be satisfied without thousands of mortals which are immolated to his sanguinary appetite.
BARON D'HOLBACH -
All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance and ferocity.
BARON D'HOLBACH -
Men always fool themselves when they give up experience for systems born of the imagination.
BARON D'HOLBACH -
The 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'HOLBACH -
Savage and furious nations, perpetually at war, adore, under diverse names, some God, conformable to their ideas, that is to say, cruel, carnivorous, selfish, blood-thirsty.
BARON D'HOLBACH -
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 -
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 -
The universe, that vast assemblage of every thing that exists, presents only matter and motion: the whole offers to our contemplation, nothing but an immense, an uninterrupted succession of causes and effects.
BARON D'HOLBACH -
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 -
You think yourself free, because you do what you will; but are you free to will, or not to will; to desire, or not to desire? Are not your volitions and desires necessarily excited by objects or qualities totally independent of you?
BARON D'HOLBACH -
It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of religion that we shall discover truth, reason and morality.
BARON D'HOLBACH -
It is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.
BARON D'HOLBACH