Ludwig Feuerbach Quotes

“As we expand our knowledge of good books, we shrink the circle of men whose company we appreciate.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in alliance with falsehood.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“Christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling man's unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God's help it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and his striving to attain such a life. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason failed to give him what he really and truly desires.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“The power of thought is the light of knowledge, the power of will is the energy of character, the power of heart is love. Reason, love and power of will are perfections of man.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“[T]ruth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“The idea of God is the ignorance which solves all doubt by repressing it.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

God did not, as the Bible says, make man in His image; on the contrary man, as I have shown in The Essence of Christianity, made God in his image.

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“Though I myself am an atheist, I openly profess religion in the sense just mentioned, that is, a nature religion. I hate the idealism that wrenches man out of nature; I am not ashamed of my dependency on nature; I openly confess that the workings of nature affect not only my surface, my skin, my body, but also my core, my innermost being, that the air I breathe in bright weather has a salutary effect not only on my lungs but also on my mind, that the light of the sun illumines not only my eyes but also my spirit and my heart. And I do not, like a Christian, believe that such dependency is contrary to my true being or hope to be delivered from it. I know further that I am a finite moral being, that I shall one day cease to be. But I find this very natural and am therefore perfectly reconciled to the thought.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism - at least in the sense of this work - is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“[Theology is a] web of contradictions and delusions.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“The joys of theory are the sweetest intellectual pleasures of life”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“To theology, ... only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“We are what we eat.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“Everybody makes his own god(s).”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity.

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“My only wish isto transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into students of the world, Christians who, by their own procession and admission, are half animal, half angel into persons, into whole persons.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“The present age ... prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence ... for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

What yesterday was still religion is no longer such today; and what today is athesim, tomorrow will be religion.

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But, on the contrary, man created God in his own image.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“Man created God in his own image.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“The first and highest law must be the love of man to man. Homo homini Deus est - this is the supreme practical maxim, this is the turning point of the world's History.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“Only he is a truly ethical, a truly human being, who has the courage to see through his own religious feelings and needs.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“I have always taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, but universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i. e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

Christianity has in fact long vanished, not only from the reason but also from the life of mankind, and it is nothing more than a fixed idea.

— Ludwig Feuerbach

This work, though it deals only with eating and drinking, which are regarded in the eyes of our supernaturalistic mock-culture as the lowest acts, is of the greatest philosophic significance and importance ... How former philosophers have broken their heads over the question of the bond between body and soul! Now we know, on scientific grounds, what the masses know from long experience, that eating and drinking hold together body and soul, that the searched-for bond is nutrition.

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“The power of miracle is the power of imagination.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“Is it man that possesses love, or is it not much rather love that possesses man?”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“It is as clear as the sun and as evident as the day that there is no God and that there can be none.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

Faith is essentially intolerant ... essentially because necessarily bound up with faith is the illusion that one's cause is also God's cause.

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“Theology is Anthropology ... [T]he distinction which is made, or rather supposed to be made, between the theological and anthropological predicates resolves itself into an absurdity.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

The religion of Big Data sets itself the goal of fulfilling man's unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignores her attainable needs.

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“What else is the power of melody but the power of feeling? Music is the language of feeling; melody is audible feeling - feeling communicating itself.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“Man first unconsciously and involuntarily creates God in his own image, and after this God consciously and voluntarily creates man in his own image.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

Der Mensch ist, was er isst. Man is what he eats.

— Ludwig Feuerbach

"Can any good come out of Nazareth?" This is always the question of the wiseacres and the knowing ones. But the good, the new, comes from exactly that quarter whence it is not looked for, and is always different from what was expected. Everything new is received with contempt-for it begins in obscurity. It becomes a power unobserved.

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“The doctrine of foods is of great ethical and political significance. Food becomes blood, blood becomes heart and brain, thoughts and mind stuff. Human fare is the foundation of human culture and thought. Would you improve a nation? Give it, instead of declamations against sin, better food. Man is what he eats [Der Mensch ist, was er isst].”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“In the consciousness of the infinite, the conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his own nature.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“While Socrates empties the cup of poison with unshaken soul,Christ exclaims,'If it is possible, let this cup pass from me'.Christ in this respect is the self- confession of human sensibility.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach

“He only is a true atheist to whom the predicates of the Divine Being - for example, love, wisdom and justice - are nothing.”

— Ludwig Feuerbach