Quotes from Ludwig Feuerbach

The salvation of the soul is the fundamental idea, the main point in Christianity; … this salvation lies only in God … But God is absolute subjectivity, … separated from the world, … set free from matter, severed from … life … and … from the distinction of sex. Separation from the world, from matter, from the life of the species, is therefore the ultimate aim of Christianity. … [T]his aim had its visible, practical realisation in Monachism.

A] faith which does not believe what it fancies it believes[.]

Miracle is agreeable because … it satisfies the wishes of man without labour[.]

God … is nothing else than the nature of understanding made objective.

The personality of God is thus the means by which man converts the qualities of his own nature into the qualities of another being, - a being external to himself. The personality of God is nothing else than the projected personality of man.

T]he essence of man is one, but this essence is infinite; … Between me and another human being - … , even though he is only one, … he supplies to me the want of many others, has … a universal significance, is the deputy of mankind, … In another I … have the consciousness of humanity; … I … learn, I … feel, that I am a man: … community constitutes humanity.

I by no means say … God is nothing, the Trinity is nothing, the Word of God is nothing, … . I only show that they are not that which the illusions of theology make them[.]

Consciousness in the strictest sense is present … in a being whom his species, his essential nature, is an object of thought.

Consciousness in the strictest sense is present only in a being to whom his species, his essential nature, is an object of thought.

To suffer is the highest command of Christianity – the history of Christianity is the history of the passion … [T]he ancient Christians … rendered the highest honour to their God by … tears of repentance and yearning. … If God himself suffered for my sake, how can I be joyful, how can I allow myself any gladness, at least on this corrupt earth, which was the theatre of his suffering?

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

This [love] ought to be a furnace that should melt us all into one heart, and should create such a fervour in us … that we should heartily love each other.' But that which in the truth of religion is the essence of the fable, is to the religious consciousness only the moral of the fable, a collateral thing.

R]eligion has the conviction that its conceptions, its predicates of God, are such as every man ought to have, and must have, if he would have the true ones – that they are conceptions necessary to human nature; nay, further, that they are objectively true, representing God as he is.

Religion annexes to its doctrines a curse and a blessing … Blessed is he that believeth, cursed is he that believeth not. Thus it appeals not to reason, but to feeling, … to the passions of hope and fear. … [T]he fear of hell urges me to believe. Even supposing my belief to be in its origin free, fear inevitably intermingles itself[.]

M]an does not stand above this his necessary conception; on the contrary, it stands above him; it animates, determines, governs him.

Christianity has spiritualised the egoism of Judaism into subjectivity (though … this subjectivity is again expressed as pure egoism), has changed the desire for earthly happiness, the goal of the Israelite religion, into the longing for heavenly bliss, which is the goal of Christianity.

T]he religious man … believes in a real sympathy of a divine being in his sufferings and wants, believes that the will of God can be determined by … prayer, … The … religious man unhesitatingly assigns his own feelings to God; God is to him a heart susceptible to all that is human.

This philosophy] … is antagonistic to minds perverted and crippled by a superhuman

Thou believest in love as a divine attribute because thy thyself lovest; thou believest that God is a wise, benevolent being because thou knowest nothing better in thyself than benevolence and wisdom; and thou believest that God exists, that therefore he is a subject … because thou thyself existest, art thyself a subject[.]

Everybody makes his own god(s).

Man … projects his being into objectivity. … [T]hen … makes himself an object to this projected image of himself[.]

Religion, at least the Christian, is the relation of man to himself, … The divine being is … human nature purified, freed from the limits of individual man, made objective … All the attributes of the divine nature are, therefore, attributes of the human nature.

I]f thou thinkest the infinite thou perceivest and affirmest the infinitude of the power of thought[.]

P]rayer is the … certainty that the power of the heart is greater than the power of Nature, … Prayer is the absolute relation of the human heart to itself, to its own nature; in prayer, man forgets that there exists a limit to his wishes, and is happy in this forgetfulness.