12 quotes
Religious ideas have sprung from the same need as all the other achievements of culture: from the necessity for defending itself against the crushing supremacy of nature.
The Future of an Illusion (1927)
Religious doctrines … are all illusions, they do not admit of proof, and no one can be compelled to consider them as true or to believe in them.
The Future of an Illusion (1927)
The true believer is in a high degree protected against the danger of certain neurotic afflictions, by accepting the universal neurosis he is spared the task of forming a personal neurosis.
The Future of an Illusion (1927)
Where the questions of religion are concerned people are guilty of every possible kind of insincerity and intellectual misdemeanor.
The Future of an Illusion (1927)
Immorality, no less than morality, has at all times found support in religion.
The Future of an Illusion (1927)
The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.
The Future of an Illusion (1927)
A poor girl may have an illusion that a prince will come and fetch her home. It is possible, some such cases have occurred. That the Messiah will come and found a golden age is much less probable.
The Future of an Illusion (1927)
"In so doing, the idea forces itself upon him that religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis, and he is optimistic enough to suppose that mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis."
The Future of an Illusion (1927)
If the truth of religious doctrines is dependent on an inner experience that bears witness to the truth, what is one to make of the many people who do not have that experience?
The Future of an Illusion (1927)
It goes without saying that a civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.
The Future of an Illusion (1927)
Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization.
The Future of an Illusion (1927)
Religion is a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find nowhere else but in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion. Religion's eleventh commandment is "Thou shalt not question."
The Future of an Illusion (1927)