Quotes from 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.

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.

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

The power of miracle is the power of imagination.

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

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.

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

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

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.

The joys of theory are the sweetest intellectual pleasures of life

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

T]ruth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred

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

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

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.

The joys of theory are the sweetest intellectual pleasures of life

Theology is a] web of contradictions and delusions.

The essence of faith … is the idea that that which man wishes actually is: he wishes to be immortal, therefore he is immortal; he wishes for the existence of a being who can do everything which is impossible to Nature and reason, therefore such a being exists[.]

But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence... illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.