Quotes by Ludwig Feuerbach

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Egoism has only itself as its sole goal. Egoism constrains, concentrates man on himself: it gives him a dense, solid principle of life; but it makes him bounded, making him indifferent to anything not immediately related to his well-being.

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Never was any truth born into the world with decorations, nor in the splendor of a throne, in the sound of cymbals and trumpets, but always in darkness, among tears and sighs.

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Only husband and wife together form human reality; husband and wife together represent the existence of the nation, because their union is the source of the multitude, the source of the emergence of other people.

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He who loves God can no longer love a man, because he has lost the understanding of what is human, and conversely, he who loves a man, truly and with all his heart, can no longer love god

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Only he who admires his own beauty instead of human beauty in general is vain.

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Goodness and morality are one and the same. Good, however, is only one who is good to others.

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In religion, man has eyes not to see, to remain blind; he has reason not to think, to remain stupid.

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Man is the beginning, middle and end of religion.

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Man trusts his own strength only when he gets what he wants

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Humor carries the soul over a precipice and teaches it to play with its pain.

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To know man, you must love him.

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A clean conscience is nothing but the joy caused by another person; a burdened conscience is nothing more than the suffering and pain caused by another person.

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The more limited a person's horizons, the less he knows history, nature and philosophy, the more sincerely he is attached to religion.

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Human nature manifests itself only in communication, in the communion of man with another man, in communion that is based on the reality of the distinction between "I" and "you".

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Distinguish between bad, inhuman and merciless selfishness and good, merciful, humane selfishness; distinguish between gentle, forced selfishness, which finds satisfaction in loving others, and self-willed, willful selfishness, which finds satisfaction in indifference or even outright malice toward others.

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The principle of morality is happiness, but not such happiness as is based on one and the same person, but happiness that is distributed among different individuals.

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The idea of ​​an essence of perfect morality is a practical idea, requiring action, imitation, and serving as a source of misunderstanding with myself, because it indicates to me what I ought to be, and at the same time, without any bias, shows me that I'm not like that.

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The next world is only the echo of this world.

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Your first obligation is to be happy. If you are happy, then you will make others happy too. The happy person sees only the happy around him.

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Principles of life are also principles of morality. Where, because of hunger, poverty, you have no material in your body, there are no principles and no material for morality, neither in your head, nor in your heart, nor in your feelings.

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Obligations to self have meaning and moral value only when they are seen as responsibilities to others - to my family, to my community, to my people, to my homeland.

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Communication ennobles and elevates man; in society, he behaves involuntarily and without pretense, except in solitude.

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Religion needs the eternal darkness of ignorance, poverty, technical impotence, lack of culture.

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Religion contradicts morality in that it contradicts reason. Kindness is closely related to truth. An altered reason attracts an altered heart. He who deceives his reason cannot have an honest heart.

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Where desire no longer exists, man no longer exists.

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Good is an affirmation, evil is the denial of the aspiration to happiness.

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Where there is no distinction between happiness and unhappiness, between joy and sorrow, there is no distinction between good and evil.

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Consciousness is the hallmark of a perfect being.

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Consciousness presents things to us differently from what they appear to be; she is a good microscope that magnifies them to make them precise and visible to our feeble feelings. It is the metaphysics of the heart.

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Consciousness has its origin in knowledge, or is connected with knowledge, but this does not mean knowledge in general, but a portion or kind of knowledge, namely, that knowledge which relates to our moral conduct and good or bad dispositions and actions.

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Superstition is connected with every religion: superstition, however, is capable of any cruelty and obliteration of any trace of humanity.

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With us, things are the same with books as with people. Although we know many people, only some of them we choose to be our friends and companions of our intimate life.

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Our ideal is not an abstract, sterile, immaterial being, our ideal is an integral, truly multifaceted, perfected, educated personality.

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The true qualities of man are discovered only when he has to show and prove them in practice.

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The aspiration to happiness is the aspiration of all aspirations.

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Where there is no aspiration for happiness, there is no aspiration.

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Where there is not enough space for a capacity to manifest, there is no such capacity either.

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Where eyes and hands begin, gods end.

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Where morality is based on theology and law on the decisions of God, there the most immoral and shameful things can be justified and substantiated.

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Every god is a being created by the imagination, an image created after man, but an image that man places outside himself and presents as an independent being.

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The will is a tendency toward happiness.

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Belief in immortality indicates nothing but the truth and the fact that man, losing his bodily existence, does not also lose his spiritual existence in the memory and hearts of living men.

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In an exalted state, people are able to do what was previously impossible for them. The passions work miracles, that is, actions which, in an ordinary, impassive state, are beyond the powers of the organs.

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There is more life in the quickly withering flower petals than in the millennial weight of granite constructions.

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Dogma is nothing more than a direct prohibition to think.

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Desire is the need for something that does not exist to exist.

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True writers are the conscience of mankind.

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In reality, all men are atheists: they deny their faith by their own deeds by their own behavior.

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My consciousness is nothing but my "I" putting itself in the place of an offended "You."

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The world is miserable only for a miserable man, the world is empty only for an empty man.

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Love of science is love of truth, therefore honesty is the main virtue of the scientist.

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Only the one who loves something has meaning. To be nothing and to love nothing is one and the same.

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Existence without needs is a useless existence.

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What are the hallmarks of true humanity in man? Reason, will and heart. The perfect man has the power to think, the power to will, and the power to feel. The power of thinking is the light of knowledge, the power of will is the energy of nature, the power of feeling is love.

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Man realizes the simplest truths too late.

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There is not only single or individual selfishness, but also social selfishness, a family, corporate, public, patriotic selfishness.

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Faith can move mountains. Yes! Faith does not solve, it only postpones difficult problems.

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What is true is not mine, nor yours, but all of us.

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The more we increase our circle of knowledge with good books, the narrower will be the circle of people in whose company we find pleasure.

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Dogma is nothing more than a definite ban on thinking.

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What is, as it is - so speaking the truth in a true way seems superficial; what is, as it is not - so saying the truth in an untrue way, the other way around, seems to have a deep meaning.

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Honesty and honor are useful to all things - including philosophy.

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The simplest truths are always the ones you arrive at the latest.

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The real purpose of school is not school, but freedom from school.

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Miracle discredits experience; so the miracle itself does not deserve credit.

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For religion only what is holy is true - for philosophy only what is true is holy.