Quotes by Baron d'Holbach

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Christian morality turns out to be specially invented to subjugate and subjugate human nature with the help of fictitious ghosts, and that is precisely why most people have not been influenced by it.

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For our happiness to be complete, we need affection and support from society, and society must ultimately respect us, salute us, work for our happiness, as much as we work for its well-being; this mutual bond is called moral duty.

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Fear has always been and always will be the most effective way to deceive and control people.

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Superstition is a passing phenomenon; no power can be of long duration unless it is based on sincerity, reason, and justice.

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Superstition, once it has taken possession of a man's soul, can rob him of peace forever.

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Only the wildest of barbarians, the meanest ambition, the blindest vanity could have laid the foundations of the dogma of eternal torments in hell.

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Vanity and greed have always been the chief vices of the clergy.

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Tolerance and humanity, the chief virtues of any moral system, are absolutely incompatible with religious prejudice.

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To give one's life for some religion is not to prove that this religion is true and spiritual; at best it only proves the martyrs' belief that their religion is so. Some enthusiast who goes to death for the sake of religion shows only religious fanaticism, which can sometimes be stronger than the will to live.

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Man is a sensitive, responsive, rational and wise being, tending towards self-preservation and happiness.

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Whatever the theologians say, it is not difficult to understand that the Christian doctrine was finally established by the power of kings and emperors; the theological dogmas, which were supposed to be pleasing to God, were preached every time with the help of force; true proved to be that religion which was preached by the emperor; a believer was considered to be one who possessed sufficient power and authority to destroy the declared enemies of God Himself.

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To understand the real essence of morality, men need neither theology nor revelations nor gods; they just need common sense.

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The more carefully we study religion, the more we will be convinced that its main purpose is the welfare of the clergy.

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The more we think about the dogmas and principles of religion, the more we are convinced that their primary purpose is to protect the interests of tyrants and clergy at the expense of social interests.

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The human race, in all countries, has become a victim of the clergy, who called religion a system, and which they invented to keep men under control, men whose imaginations they enslaved, whose good sense they darkened and whose reason they want to destroy.

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Man is superstitious only because he is shy, and he is shy only because he is ignorant.

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Man is not free for a single moment of his life.

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Man will always seek pleasure, because it is characteristic of him to love everything that enlightens him, makes his existence pleasant; it is impossible to make man love trouble and misery.

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The basis of friendly attraction is those advantages which so-called friends tend to obtain from each other. Deprive them of these advantages and their friendship ceases to exist.

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The superstitious man should be treated as the alcoholic; superstition is a chronic but curable disease. Of course, you can never be sure that the disease will not recur.

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Abandon for ever all superstitions which are apt to bring only misfortune, let your only religion be moral; let happiness be your end, and reason your guide, and let you find in yourselves virtue enough to accomplish this end, let this virtue be your only God. To love virtue and live in virtue - this is the only way to worship God. If there really is a God who cares about his creatures, an impartial, good and wise God, he will not reject you for following reason.

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The followers of a jealous, vengeful and cruel God - so it seems that the God of the Jews and Christians - can be considered neither reserved, nor patient, nor humane. Those who believe in a God who can be offended by the thoughts and beliefs of his weak creatures, who condemns to eternal torments, to total extermination those who preach another religion, they too are impatient, cruel and unforgiving.

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To worship God is to worship a fiction created by the human imagination or, more simply, someone who does not exist.

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A joker remarked that "the true religion is always the one on whose side the king and the executioner are."

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The hope of a future paradise and the fear of the torments to come have proven to be an obstacle for people in their path to happiness here on earth. It served only to torment and exhaust some weak and gullible souls, and could not stop any man, drawn by strong passions or ingrained habits.

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Oh, if only the states that make up the globe were small, and if only they were proportional to the talent of those who govern them!

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Morality is the science of the relationships that exist between people and the obligations that arise from these relationships.

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You cannot live happily if you are always trembling with fear.

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There is no need to believe in God, it would be wiser to forget him altogether.

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God will not be able to do anything to a man who is so reckless that he disregards the opinion of others, ignores decency, breaks the law, and condemns himself to the mockery and curse of his neighbor. Any man with judgment will very easily understand that in this world the esteem and love of one's neighbor are absolutely necessary to be happy and that for those who harm themselves through their own vices and arouse the contempt of society towards them, life becomes a very heavy burden.

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No man can be a hero in the eyes of his servant. It is not surprising that God, of whom the priests make a scarecrow for others, scares them a little and almost does not influence their behavior.

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To think that we are bound to believe in things which are not accessible to our reason is as absurd as to say that God requires us to fly without wings.

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Justice is the basis of all social virtues.

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Devotion to any belief system is nothing but the result of habits. It is as difficult for the reason to refuse the usual way of thinking and to accept other beliefs as it is for the body to act and live without using its faculties and organs.

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It is enough to look at things without prejudice to convince us that priests are extremely dangerous people. Their primary goal is to control people's reason and then rob their wallets.

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Conscience is an inner judge that appreciates in what case and to what extent our deeds can be praised or blamed by our neighbor.

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Death for certain beliefs proves as little the truth or supremacy of that belief, as death in battle does not or the supremacy of that belief, just as death in battle can in no way serve as a proof of the ruler's righteousness, for the interests of which many madmen are ready to give their lives.

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A government established by force is kept in power also by force.

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The most uncertain thing in any religion is its foundation.

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Religion only consoles those who are unable to perceive it; the promise of a reward can only tempt those who do not think of the loathsome, hateful, and violent character which religion ascribes to God.

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Religion is a restraint for people of intemperate character or bound by certain circumstances of life. The fear of God keeps sinless only those who can no longer really desire something or are unable to do it.

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Religion as such is an enemy of human joys and prosperity. Blessed are the poor! Blessed are those who cry! Blessed are those who suffer! Woe to those who live in gaiety and debauchery! These are the discoveries preached by Christianity!

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Religion is nothing but an art of occupying the limited mind of man with things which he is unable to understand.

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It is seldom seen how the victories and conquests made are offset by the expenses incurred in their name; the policy of the rulers is usually limited to the acquisition of trifles at the cost of great losses. The most remarkable successes usually reduce the real potential of the power.

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There is no point in trying to cure people of evil without exterminating their prejudices.

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The natural difference between men makes equality of their wealth impossible. Vain would be the attempts to make common the wealth of individuals who are not equal in skill and power, in ingenuity and active character.

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The priests understood that by serving gods, they were actually serving themselves, thus having the opportunity to very easily appropriate the gifts, objects and sacrifices brought to beings who never claimed all these things.

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Ignorance of nature is the root of those unknown forces which have so long terrified the human race, and of those superstitious dogmas which have been the source of all its misfortunes.

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If the ministers of the church have often allowed the poor to defend God's will with arms in hand, they have never allowed revolt against the real and obvious evil of violence.

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If the throne is a source of aristocracy's splendor, then it will soon become a weapon of its decay and fetter.

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The desire to please, the devotion to tradition, the fear of appearing ridiculous and the fear of slandering people - these are incentives that are much stronger than religious views.

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One may think that religious morality is invented only to destroy society and turn people into primitive beings.

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Morality would be a useless science if it did not know how to show man that his greatest interest is to be virtuous.

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Morality is the only cult, the only natural religion of man on earth, the only one that should concern him in this world. Only by fulfilling the requirements of this morality can we consider ourselves to be fulfilling God's will. If indeed God created man in His image and likeness, then He certainly also endowed him with the instinct of preservation and aspiration for happiness. If God created us to be able to think, it means that he wanted us to be able to use this thinking, to distinguish evil from good, useful from harmful. If He created us to be sociable, it means that He wanted us to live in society and tend to its welfare.

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Morality has nothing in common with religion...religion does not serve as a basis for morality, it is rather hostile to it. True morality must be based on human nature; religious morality will always develop under the chimeras and despotism of those men who endow God with language, and who, for the most part, contradict the essence and nature of man.

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An enthroned sage would be the happiest of mortals.

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Ignorance of natural causes forced people to create their own gods, and then deception turned them into something hideous.

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It is not enough to be rich to be happy; it is important to know how to use wealth.

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Ignorance is the first premise of faith and that is why the church values ​​it so much.

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God did not make man in His image and likeness, but man, from time immemorial, created God in his image, endowing Him with his reason and qualities, but especially with his shortcomings.

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Very often we meet wise men who continue to be followers of childish prejudices... But sometimes the victims of superstitions become brilliant men; the imagination which is characteristic of them increases their wandering, and binds them more and more to some opinions of which they would feel ashamed if they were allowed to have recourse to their own reason... The man of sound judgment thinks rationally about every object , but when it comes to religion, it goes back to childhood.

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Genius is a vision that encompasses at a glance all the points of the horizon.

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The people's choice of religion will always be influenced by their leaders. The true religion is always that promoted by the king; the true God is the one whom the king commands us to worship; thus, the will of the king always proves to be the will of God.

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Any person who thinks seriously about religion and its supernatural principles, who seriously weighs its advantages and disadvantages, will be convinced that religion and its principles are not good for mankind, and in any case contradict human nature.

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Every religion is intolerant in itself, both by virtue of its principles and by virtue of its interests.

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All the religions that exist on earth only give us a collection of myths and fancies that boggle the mind.

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Punishment in the afterlife is nothing but an invention designed to cloud human reason, to mislead people, to deprive them of peace of mind, and to turn them into obedient slaves of the clergy.

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Injustice reigns in the world.

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In matters of religion, people can be called big children.

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God, who proved to be so deceitful and insidious, creating the first man and then subjecting him to temptation and sin, cannot be considered something perfect and must be considered a monster, unjust and cruel.

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They say God is patient. But patience is a manifest sin; doesn't this mean detecting an impotence, or even complicity in this sin?

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To say that moral ideals are innate or the result of instinct is like saying that man can read letters.

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To say that religion is not accessible to reason is to admit that it is not made for thinking beings; thus, we can agree that even those who spread the religion do not understand any of the mysteries they preach day by day.

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If evil did not exist in this world, man would not even think of God.

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If God is so long-suffering in the execution of his judgment and allows the presence of evil throughout the existence of our planet, then what guarantees can there be that in the world to come God will do the same and not allow suffering to persist in the ranks its inhabitants?

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The gospel indeed brought with it "not peace, but a sword." From the apostles until today, the Christian world is divided by hatred, persecution and pestilence.

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The clergy would be very unhappy if they were paid spiritually for their spiritual work.

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A friend who is of no use to his friend becomes a stranger to him.

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Down with reason! - here is the foundation of religion.

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The dogmas of any religion turn out to be absurdities from the point of view of another religion, which preaches other equally absurd doctrines.

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Virtue is incompatible with ignorance, superstition, slavery; slaves can only be subdued through fear of punishment.

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To make others happy - this is the best way to become happy in this world; to do good deeds - is to care about the happiness of your fellow man.

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Even the happiest wars do not bring peace.

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A good Christian is a man who does exactly what his priests demand; and these, instead of virtues, require him to be blind, generous and obedient.

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Easy reconciliation hardens the guilty heart even more.

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In Christianity, everything, even sins, is ultimately for the good of the priest.

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Prayer postulates a capricious God, who has no memory, who is receptive to praise, who is flattered to see his subjects humbled before him, who insists on seeing repeated signs of their apostasy at every moment.

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God, who is said to be all goodness, wants to be begged for his favors, he grants them only to those who ask him many times, (...) while he only welcomes requests that fit into certain established rules. What shall we say of the father who, although he knows the needs of his children, does not give them the necessary nourishment until they are incapacitated by fervent and often aimless entreaties?

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Man (...) wanted to be a metaphysician before he became a physicist.

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The body is identical and of the same essence as the soul.

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Existence is nothing more than constantly being born, growing, regressing and dying, with greater or lesser slowness or speed.

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A happy person is one who can enjoy the benefits of nature, an unhappy person is one who is unable to enjoy these benefits.

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Will we be smarter if, every time we see a phenomenon for which we cannot untangle the cause, we are told that this effect was brought about by the will or power of God?

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The human spirit tries in vain to transcend the limits of the visible world; he is always forced to return here.