Ludwig Feuerbach Quotes

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.

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

For the religious the holy is truth, for the philosophic the truth is holy.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The power of miracle is the power of imagination.

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.

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.

Man created God in his own image.

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

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

The task of the modern era was the realization and humanization of God – the transformation and dissolution of theology into anthropology.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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].

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