Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach - The Essence of Christianity (1841)

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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.

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

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

Ludwig Andreas 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 Andreas Feuerbach
Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever the right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established.

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

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

Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
The first philosophers were astronomers. The heavens remind man … that he is destined not merely to act, but also to contemplate.

Ludwig Andreas 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 Andreas Feuerbach