Michel Onfray Quotes & Sayings

God will endure for as long as the reasons that brought him into being;
And so will those who deny him. — Michel Onfray

I found it amazing people can think that art must be connected to religion. Religion may give art themes, but there would still be art without religion. Bach is not proof that art exists. — Michel Onfray

Religion is like magic. It is all about tricks. — Michel Onfray

I believe in libertarian options because they allow an interesting management of the capital and are based on co-operation, reciprocity, contract, federation. — Michel Onfray

I have a big problem with Islam. — Michel Onfray

Many militants of the secular cause look astonishingly like clergy. Worse: like caricatures of clergy. — Michel Onfray

I am a sworn atheist and therefore from my point of view the Talmud or the Koran don't constitute works of political philosophy but rather writings that stand in utter contradiction to concepts like logic, freedom, feminism, secularism, brotherhood - which are my ideals. — Michel Onfray

For the first time (but how long will it take us to acknowledge this?) in the history of ideas, a philosopher had dedicated a whole book to the question of atheism. He professed it, demonstrated it, arguing and quoting, sharing his reading and his reflections, and seeking confirmation from his own observations of the everyday world. His title sets it out clearly: Memoir of the Thoughts and Feelings of Jean Meslier; and so does his subtitle: Clear and Evident Demonstrations of the Vanity and Falsity of All the Religions of the World. The book appeared in 1729, after his death. Meslier had spent the greater part of his life working on it. The history of true atheism had begun. — Michel Onfray

For the establishment, philosophy is both an elitist and an idealist discipline: In high school, it is a compulsory subject; at university, they teach the idealist line. They are conducting a conversation with themselves. — Michel Onfray

I do not despise believers. I find them neither ridiculous nor pathetic, but I lose all hope when I see that they prefer the comforting fairy tales of children to the cruel hard facts of adults. Better the faith that brings peace of mind than the rationality that brings worry--even at the price of perpetual mental infantilism. What a demonstration of metaphysical sleight of hand--and what a monstrous price! — Michel Onfray

What can a philosopher show for himself? His life. If someone writes a book, but it is not accompanied by a philosophical life, it is not worth our time. Wisdom is measured in details: it is found in what one says and doesn't say, what one does and doesn't do, what one thinks and doesn't think. — Michel Onfray

Socialists find me too far left; Trotskyites not far enough; ecologists say I am too happy eating foie gras, defending nuclear energy and GM plants; feminists find I am not enough of a woman; anarchists a petit-bourgeois who has sold out because I believe in universal suffrage. — Michel Onfray

Philosophy is best practised by people in general and not by philosophers alone. Philosophy is too often a luxury now, but in ancient Greece, carpenters, masons and beggars were the main practitioners. What I am trying to develop is a philosophical system where all the subjects can be taught. — Michel Onfray

It's hard for me to imagine a philosopher disconnected from the world, indifferent to the cares of his country, unmoved by poverty, unemployment: I am a committed citizen. — Michel Onfray

We are fashioned not by our genes, but by our environment - by the family and socio-historic conditions in which we evolve. — Michel Onfray

You cannot kill a breeze, a wind, a fragrance; you cannot kill a dream or an ambition. — Michel Onfray

I persist in preferring philosophers to rabbis priests imams ayatollahs and mullahs. Rather than trust their theological hocus-pocus I prefer to draw on alternatives to the dominant philosophical historiography: the laughers materialists radicals cynics hedonists atheists sensualists voluptuaries. They know that there is only one world and that promotion of an afterlife deprives us of the enjoyment and benefit of the only one there is. A genuinely deadly sin. — Michel Onfray

We do not possess an official certificate of birth for worship of one God. But the family line is clear: the Jews invented it to endure the coherence, cohesion and existence of their small, threatened people. — Michel Onfray

Death is a false fear. When it is here, you won't be. When it's not, you are here. — Michel Onfray

I discovered philosophy in my youth when I read 'wildly,' and thus I was exposed to the world of ideas. — Michel Onfray

Religion is a reassurance - in fact, that's its only purpose. — Michel Onfray

God is a fiction invented by people so they do not have to face the reality of their condition. — Michel Onfray

By aiming for paradise, we lose sight of earth. Hope of a beyond and aspiration to an afterlife engender a sense of futility in the present. If the prospect of getting taken up to paradise generates joy, it is the mindless joy of a baby picked up from his crib. — Michel Onfray

Camus believed in dialogue and diplomacy, and enlisted his work as a philosopher to the need to find nonviolent solutions, whereas Sartre called for violent conflicts and justified terror. — Michel Onfray

Religion is an irrational construct. — Michel Onfray

If we include hedonistic philosophy in hospitals, the lives of patients suffering from cancer would be much, much better. — Michel Onfray

We can no more tolerate neutrality and benevolence toward every conceivable form of discourse, including that of magical thinking, than we can lump together executioner and victim, good and evil. — Michel Onfray

The three monotheism share a series of identical forms of aversion: hatred of reason and intelligence; hatred of freedom; hatred of all books in the name of one book alone; hatred of sexuality, women,and pleasure; hatred of feminine; hatred of body, of desires, of drives. Instead Judaism, Christianity, and Islam extol faith and belief, obedience and submission, taste for death and longing for the beyond, the asexual angel and chastity, virginity and monogamous love, wife and mother, soul and spirit. In other words, life crucified and nothingness exalted. — Michel Onfray