Ludwig Feuerbach Quotes & Sayings

Wherever this idea, that the religious predicates are only anthropomorphisms, has taken possession of man, there has doubt, has unbelief, obtained mastery of faith. — Ludwig Feuerbach

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

We are what we eat. — Ludwig Feuerbach

If God were an object to the bird, he would be a winged being[.] — Ludwig Feuerbach

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

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

The joys of theory are the sweetest intellectual pleasures of life — Ludwig Feuerbach

Existence is one with self-consciousness; existence with self-consciousness is existence simply. If I do not know that I exist, it is all one whether I exist or not. — Ludwig Feuerbach

The notion that the fulfilment of prayer has been determined from eternity, that it was originally included in the plan of creation, is the empty, absurd fiction of a mechanical mode of thought, which is in absolute contradiction with the nature of religion. Whether God decides on the fulfilment of my prayer now, on the immediate occasion of my offering it, or whether he did decide on it long ago, is the same thing. — Ludwig Feuerbach

The more man alienates himself from Nature, the more subjective, i.e., supranatural or antinatural, is his view of things, the greater the horror he has of Nature, or at least of those natural objects and processes which displease his imagination, which affect him disagreeably. — Ludwig Feuerbach

Man created God in his own image. — Ludwig Feuerbach

[T]ruth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred — Ludwig Feuerbach

[T]he present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original[.] — Ludwig Feuerbach

In breathing I am an object of the air, the air the subject; but when I make the air an object of thought, of investigation, when I analyse it, I reverse the relation - I make myself the subject, the air an object. — 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

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

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

Love determined God to the renunciation of his divinity. — Ludwig Feuerbach

[T]he Christians abolished the distinction between soul and person, species and individual, and therefore placed immediately in self what belongs only to the totality of the species. — Ludwig Feuerbach

The understanding is universal, pantheistic, the love of the universe; but the grand characteristic of religion, and of the Christian religion especially, is that it is thoroughly anthropotheistic, the exclusive love of man for himself, the exclusive self-affirmation of the human nature. — Ludwig Feuerbach

[M]an places the aim of his action in God, but God has no other aim of action than the moral and eternal salvation of man: thus man has in fact no other aim than himself. — 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

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

Faith does not limit itself by the idea of a world, a universe, a necessity. — Ludwig Feuerbach

The unwedded and ascetic life is the direct way to the heavenly, immortal life, for heaven is nothing else than life liberated from the conditions of the species, supernatural, sexless, absolutely subjective life. — Ludwig Feuerbach

As Israel made the wants of his national existence the law of the world, as under the dominance of these wants he deified even his political vindictiveness; so the Christian made the requirements of human feeling the absolute powers and laws of the world. [T]hat is, indeed, only of man considered as Christian; for Christianity, in contradiction with the genuine universal human heart, recognised man only under the condition, the limitation, of belief in Christ. — 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

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

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

It is not I, but religion that worships man, although religion, or rather theology, denies this; it is not I, an insignificant individual, but religion itself that says: God is man, man is God — 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

God is the mirror of man. — Ludwig Feuerbach

[T]o a limited being its limited understanding is not felt to be a limitation; on the contrary, it is perfectly happy and contented with this understanding[.] — 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

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

Belief in Providence is belief in a power to which all things stand at command to be used according to its pleasure, in opposition to which all the power of reality is nothing. Providence cancels the laws of Nature; it interrupts the course of necessity, the iron bond which inevitably binds effects to causes; in short, it is the same unlimited, all-powerful will, that called the world into existence out of nothing. Miracle is a creatio ex nihilo. He who turns water into wine, makes wine out of nothing, for the constituents of wine are not found in water; otherwise, the production of wine would not be a miraculous, but a natural act. The only attestation, the only proof of Providence is miracle. Thus Providence is an expression of the same idea as creation out of nothing. — Ludwig Feuerbach

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

[M]an [has] the power of abstraction from himself[.] — Ludwig Feuerbach

Israel is the historical definition of the specific nature of the religious consciousness, save only that here this consciousness was circumscribed by the limits of a particular, national interest. Hence, we need only let these limits fall, and we have the Christian religion. — 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

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

I do not regard the limits of the past and present as the limits of humanity of the future — Ludwig Feuerbach

In reality, where everything passes on naturally, the copy follows the original, the image the thing which it represents, the thought its object, but on the supernatural, miraculous ground of theology, the original follows the copy, the thing its own likeness.

"it is strange" says St. Augustine, "But nevertheless true, that this world could not exist if it was not known to God." That means the world is known and thought before it exists; nay it exists only because it was thought of. The existence is a consequence of the knowledge or of the act of thinking, the original a consequence of the copy, the object a consequence of its likeness. — Ludwig Feuerbach

If thy predicates are anthropomorphisms, the subject is an anthropomorphism too. — Ludwig Feuerbach

[W]e people the other planets, not that we may place there different beings from ourselves, but more beings of our own and similar nature. — Ludwig Feuerbach

A circle in a straight line is the mathematical symbol of miracle. — Ludwig Feuerbach

We consume the air and we are consumed by it; we enjoy and are enjoyed. — Ludwig Feuerbach

The belief in the immortality of man is the belief in the divinity of man[.] — 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

He who makes God act humanly, declares human activity to be divine[.] — 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

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

[W]hile you believe in and construct your supra- and extra-natural God, you believe in and construct nothing else than the supra- and extra-naturalism of your own self. — 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

[Theology is a] web of contradictions and delusions. — Ludwig Feuerbach

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

To every religion the gods of other religions are only notions concerning God, but its own conception of God is to it God himself, the true God. — 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

[T]he world springs out of a want, out of privation, but it is false speculation to make this privation an ontological being. — 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

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

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

[O]mnipotence is nothing else than subjectivity exempting itself from all objective conditions and limitations[.] — Ludwig Feuerbach

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

[H]eavenly personality, or the perpetuation of human personality in heaven is nothing else than personality released from all earthly encumbrances and limitations[.] [H]ere we are men, there gods[.] — 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

[T]he object of any subject is nothing else than the subject's own nature taken objectively. — 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

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. — 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

God does not negative himself in the Incarnation, but he shows himself as that which he is, as a human being. — Ludwig Feuerbach

The law holds man in bondage; love makes him free. — 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

Pantheism identifies man with Nature. whether its visible appearance, or its abstract essence. Personalism isolates, separates him from Nature; converts him from a part into the whole, into an absolute essence by himself. — Ludwig Feuerbach

To know God and not oneself to be God, to know blessedness and not oneself to enjoy it, is a state of disunity or unhappiness. — Ludwig Feuerbach

God is the reason expressing, affirming itself as the highest existence. To the imagination, the reason is the revelation of God; but to the reason, God is the revelation of the reason[.] — Ludwig Feuerbach

The Christians made mental phenomena into independent beings, their own feelings into qualities of things, the passions which governed them into powers which governed the world, in short, predicates of their own nature, whether recognised as such or not, into independent, subjective existences. — Ludwig Feuerbach

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

That which I think only according to the standard of my individuality is not binding on another; it can be conceived otherwise; it is an accidental, merely subjective view. — Ludwig Feuerbach

Everybody makes his own god(s). — Ludwig Feuerbach

The power of miracle is the power of imagination. — Ludwig Feuerbach

[I]f God as a subject is the determined, while the quality, the predicate, is determining, then in truth the rank of the godhead is due not to the subject, but to the predicate. — Ludwig Feuerbach

A word is an abstract image, the imaginary thing, or, in so far as everything is ultimately an object of the thinking power, it is the imagined thought: hence men, when they know the word, the name for a thing, fancy that they know the thing also. — Ludwig Feuerbach

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

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