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Baron d'Holbach Quotes
1723–1789 France
Baron d'Holbach, Paul-Henri Thiry (8 December 1723 – 21 January 1789) was a French author, philosopher and encyclopedist. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, Germany.
France Academics Philosophers Scientists Also known as: Holbach
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All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God.
It is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.
If the ignorance of nature gave birth to such a variety of gods, the knowledge of this nature is calculated to destroy them.
Pascal proves nothing in favour of Religion, unless that a man of genius may be foolish on some subjects, and is but a child, when he is weak enough to listen to his prejudices.
Now, if the ignorance of nature gave birth to Gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.
Everything that passes in the world, proves to us, in the clearest manner, that it is not governed by an intelligent being.
Moreover, the indulgence which he preached must have gained him the hearts of all the ladies in his auditory.
In religion, as at play, one begins with being dupe, and ends with being knave.
To wonder at the order of nature, is to wonder that any thing can exist; it is to be surprised at one's own existence.
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 dogma of the resurrection of Jesus is only attested by men whose subsistence depended on that absurd romance; and as roguery continually belies itself, these witnesses could not agree among themselves in their evidence.
Jesus charged people of property with the maintenance of his apostles. Their successors have taken sufficient advantage of this, and through it assumed an authority to exercise the most cruel extortions on impoverished nations.
The preacher recommended peace and concord; dispositions necessary to a new born, weak, and persecuted sect; but this necessity ceased when this sect had attained strength enough to dictate the law.
We are quite surprised at finding, that Moses and the ancient Hebrew writers have no where mentioned the dogma of a future life, which now-a-days forms one of the most important articles of the Christian religion.
the apostles, and especially their successors in the sacred ministry have, in preaching their gospel, brought on the world troubles and divisions unknown in all other preceding religions.
The universe can be only what it is; all sensible being there enjoy and suffer, that is, are moved sometimes in an agreeable, and sometimes in a disagreeable manner. these effects are necessary; they result necessarily from causes, which act only according to their properties.
We are all just cogs in a machine, doing what we were always meant to do, with no actual volition. (1770)
Suns are extinguished or become corrupted, planets perish and scatter across the wastes of the sky; other suns are kindled, new planets formed to make their revolutions or describe new orbits, and man, an infinitely minute part of a globe which itself is only an imperceptible point in the immense whole, believes that the universe is made for himself.
Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him in ignorance of his real duties and true interests. It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of Religion, that we shall discover Truth, Reason, and Morality. Religion diverts us from the causes of evils, and from the remedies which nature prescribes; far from curing, it only aggravates, multiplies, and perpetuates them.
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