Quotes from Baron d'Holbach

It is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.

The unhappiness of people is due to their ignorance of nature.

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.

The source of man's unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature.

All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God.

It is very strange that men should deny a Creator and yet attribute to themselves the power of creating eels.

Nature, you say, is totally inexplicable without a God. That is to say, to explain what you understand very little, you have need of a cause which you understand not at all.

To discover the true principles of Morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods: They have need only of common sense.

If God be an infinite being, there cannot be, either in the present or future world, any relative proportion between man and his God. Thus, the idea of God can never enter the human mind.

It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of religion that we shall discover truth, reason and morality.

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.

When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths or to reject absurdities and palpable contradictions.

The atheist . . . destroys the chimeras which afflict the human race, and so leads men back to nature, to experience and to reason.

Religion unites man with God, or forms a communication between them; yet do they not say, 'God is infinite?' If God be infinite, no finite being can have communication or relation with him.

Tolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes to religious fanaticism.