27 quotes
To theology, … only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred.
Lectures on the Essence of Religion (1851)
The first philosophers were astronomers. The heavens remind man … that he is destined not merely to act, but also to contemplate.
The Essence of Christianity (1841)
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.
The Essence of Christianity (1841)
The history of philosophical system is the picture gallery of reason.
Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy (1839)
God is for man the commonplace book where he registers his highest feelings and thoughts, the genealogical album into which he enters the names of the things most dear and sacred to him.
The Essence of Christianity (1843)
The more the sensuous is denied, the more sensuous is the God to whom it is sacrificed.
Introduction to The Essence of Christianity (1843)
To enrich God, man must become poor; that God may be all, man must be nothing.
The Essence of Christianity (1841)
Hegel … proceeds abstractly from the pre-existence of the intellect. … He does not appeal to the intellect within us.
Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy (1839)
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.
The Essence of Christianity (1841)
I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in alliance with falsehood.
The Essence of Christianity (1841)
Demonstrating is therefore only the means through which I strip my thought of the form of “mine-ness” so that the other person may recognize it as his own.
Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy (1839)
What man calls Absolute Being, his God, is his own being. The power of the object over him is therefore the power of his own being. Thus, the power of the object of feeling is the power of feeling itself; the power of the object of reason is the power of reason itself; and the power of the object of will is the power of will itself.
The Essence of Christianity (1841)
All presentation, all demonstration—and the presentation of thought is demonstration—has, according to its original determination—and this is all that matters to us—the cognitive activity of the other person as its ultimate aim.
Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy (1839)
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.
Lectures on the Essence of Religion (1851)
I have only found the key to the cipher of the Christian religion, only extricated its true meaning from the web of contradictions and delusions called theology.
It is true that 'religious naturalism', or the acknowledgment of the Divine in Nature, is also an element of the Christian religion….but it is by no means the characteristic, the tendency of the Christian religion.
A true atheist, that is, an atheist in the ordinary sense, is therefore he alone to whom the predicates of the Divine Being – for example, love, wisdom, and justice – are nothing, not he to whom only the subject of these predicates is nothing.
Introduction to The Essence of Christianity (1843)
...for stones, plants, and animals there is no God, but only for man.
The Essence of Christianity (1841)
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 Essence of Christianity (1841)
We have busied ourselves and contented ourselves long enough with speaking and writing; now at last we demand that the word become flesh, the spirit matter; we are as sick of political as we are of philosophical idealism; we are determined to become political materialists.
Lectures on the Essence of Religion (1851)