Paul-Henri Thiry > Quotes

“If the ignorance of nature gave birth to such a variety of gods, the knowledge of this nature is calculated to destroy them.”
― Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach, System of Nature

“All children are atheists, they have no idea of God.”
― Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach, System of Nature

“If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them, and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of man serve its own interests.”
― Baron D. Holbach

“Man’s life is a line that nature commands him to describe upon the surface of the earth, without his ever being able to swerve from it, even for an instant. He is born without his own consent; his organization does in nowise depend upon himself; his ideas come to him involuntarily; his habits are in the power of those who cause him to contract them; he is unceasingly modified by causes, whether visible or concealed, over which he has no control, which necessarily regulate his mode of existence, give the hue to his way of thinking, and determine his manner of acting. He is good or bad, happy or miserable, wise or foolish, reasonable or irrational, without his will being for any thing in these various states.”
― Baron d'Holbach

“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.”
― Baron d'Holbach

“All errour is prejudicial: it is by deceiving himself that man is plunged in misery. He neglected Nature; he understood not her laws; he formed gods of the most preposterous kinds: these became the sole objects of his hope, the creatures of his fear, and he trembled under these visionary deities; under the supposed influence of imaginary beings created by himself; under the terrour inspired by blocks of stone; by logs of wood; by flying fish; or else under the frowns of men, mortal as himself, whom his distempered fancy had elevated above that Nature of which alone he is capable of forming any idea.”
― Baron d'Holbach

“How could the human mind progress, while tormented with frightful phantoms, and guided by men, interested in perpetuating its ignorance and fears? Man has been forced to vegetate in his primitive stupidity: he has been taught stories about invisible powers upon whom his happiness was supposed to depend. Occupied solely by his fears, and by unintelligible reveries, he has always been at the mercy of priests, who have reserved to themselves the right of thinking for him, and of directing his actions.”
― Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach

“. . . In all parts of our globe, fanatics have cut each other's throats, publicly burnt each other, committed without a scruple and even as a duty, the greatest crimes, and shed torrents of blood . . .

Savage and furious nations, perpetually at war, adore, under divers names, some God, conformable to their ideas, that is to say, cruel, carnivorous, selfish, blood-thirsty. We find, in all the religions, 'a God of armies,' a 'jealous God,' an 'avenging God,' a 'destroying God,' a 'God,' who is pleased with carnage, and whom his worshippers consider it a duty to serve. Lambs, bulls, children, men, and women, are sacrificed to him. Zealous servants of this barbarous God think themselves obliged even to offer up themselves as a sacrifice to him. Madmen may everywhere be seen, who, after meditating upon their terrible God, imagine that to please him they must inflict on themselves, the most exquisite torments. The gloomy ideas formed of the deity, far from consoling them, have every where disquieted their minds, and prejudiced follies destructive to happiness.”
― Baron D'Holbach

“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.”
― Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach

“Man cannot cherish his existence any longer than life holds out charms to him: when he is wrought upon by painful sensations, or drawn by contrary impulsions, his natural tendency is deranged; he is under the necessity to follow a new route; this conducts him to his end, which it even displays to him as the most desirable good.”
― Baron d'Holbach

“...if in the heat of the dispute he insists and asks, 'Am I not the master of throwing myself out of the window?' I shall answer him, no; that whilst he preserves his reason there is no probability that the desire of proving his free agency, will become a motive sufficiently powerful to make him sacrifice his life to the attempt: if, notwithstanding this, to prove he is a free agent, he should actually precipitate himself from the window, it would not be a sufficient warranty to conclude he acted freely, but rather that it was the violence of his temperament which spurred him on to this folly. Madness is a state, that depends upon the heat of the blood, not upon the will. A fanatic or a hero, braves death as necessarily as a more phlegmatic man or a coward flies from it.”
― Baron d'Holbach

“If a faithful account was rendered of man's ideas upon the Divinity, he would be obliged to acknowledge, that for the most part the word Gods has been used to express the concealed, remote, unknown causes of the effects he witnessed; that he applies this term when the spring of natural, the source of known causes ceases to be visible: as soon as he loses the thread of these causes, or as soon as his mind can no longer follow the chain, he solves the difficulty, terminates his research, by ascribing it to his gods; thus giving a vague definition to an unknown cause, at which either his idleness, or his limited knowledge, obliges him to stop. When, therefore, he ascribes to his gods the production of some phenomenon, the novelty or the extent of which strikes him with wonder, but of which his ignorance precludes him from unravelling the true cause, or which he believes the natural powers with which he is acquainted are inadequate to bring forth; does he, in fact, do any thing more than substitute for the darkness of his own mind, a sound to which he has been accustomed to listen with reverential awe?”
― Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach, System of Nature

“When it shall be desired to enlighten man, let him always have truth laid before him. Instead of kindling his imagination by the idea of those pretended goods that a future state has in reserve for him, let him be solaced, let him be succoured; or, at least, let him be permitted to enjoy the fruit of his labour; let not his substance be ravaged from him by cruel imposts; let him not be discouraged from work, by finding all his labour inadequate to support his existence, let him not be driven into that idleness that will surely lead him on to crime: let him consider his present existence, without carrying his views to that which may attend him after his death: let his industry be excited; let his talents be rewarded; let him be rendered active, laborious, beneficent, and virtuous, in the world he inhabits; let it be shown to him that his actions are capable of having an influence over his fellow men, but not on those imaginary beings located in an ideal world.”
― Baron d'Holbach

“It is thus religion infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity and fanaticism: if he has a heated imagination it drives him on to fury; if he has activity, it makes him a madman, who is frequently as cruel to himself, as he is dangerous and incommodious to others: if, on the contrary, he be phlegmatic or of a slothful habit, he becomes melancholy and is useless to society.”
― Baron d'Holbach

“Let education kindle only those which are truly beneficial
to the human species; let it favour those alone which are really necessary to the maintenance of society. The passions of man are dangerous, only because every thing conspires to give them an evil direction.”
― Baron d'Holbach

“An atheist is a man who does not believe the existence of a God; now, no one can be certain of the existence of a being whom he does not conceive, and who is said to unite incompatible qualities.”
― Baron d'Holbach, The System of Nature

“Athées: Noms que les théologiens donnent assez libéralement à quiconque ne pense pas comme eux sur la divinité, ou ne la croit pas telle qu’ils l’ont arrangée dans le creux de leurs infaillibles cerveaux. En général un athée c’est tout homme qui ne croit pas au dieu des prêtres.”
― Baron d'Holbach, La Théologie portative ou Dictionnaire abrégé de la religion chrétienne

“Miracles: Œuvres surnaturelles, c’est-à-dire contraires aux lois sages que la divinité immuable a prescrites à la nature. Avec de la foi on fait des miracles tant qu’on veut, et avec de la foi on les croit tant qu’on peut. Quand la foi diminue on ne voit plus de miracles, et la nature pour lors va tout bonnement son petit train.”
― Baron d'Holbach, La Théologie portative ou Dictionnaire abrégé de la religion chrétienne

“God is the author of all; and yet, we are assured that evil does not come from God. Whence then does it come? From man. But, who made man? God. Evil then comes from God. If he had not made man as he is, moral evil or sin would not have existed in the world.”
― Paul Henri Thiry, Good Sense

“The power of loving a God whom religion paints as the most detestable of beings would, doubtless, be a proof of the most supernatural grace, that is, a grace the most contrary to nature; to love that which we do not know, is, assuredly, sufficiently difficult; to love that which we fear, is still more difficult; but to love that which is exhibited to us in the most repulsive colors, is manifestly impossible.”
― Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach, Letters to Eugenia; Or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices

“I feel, and another feels like me; this is the foundation of all morals.”
― Paul Henri Thiry, Good Sense

“Fatalisme: Systême affreux qui soumet tout à la nécessité, dans un monde réglé par les décrets immuables de la divinité, sans la volonté de laquelle rien ne peut arriver. Si tout était nécessaire, adieu le libre arbitre de l’homme, dont les prêtres ont si grand besoin pour pouvoir le damner.”
― Baron d'Holbach, La Théologie portative ou Dictionnaire abrégé de la religion chrétienne

“DEMOCRITUS made it consist in motion, consequently gave it a manner of existence. ARISTOXENES, who was himself a musician, made it harmony. ARISTOTLE regarded the soul as the moving faculty, upon which depended the motion of living bodies. The earliest doctors of Christianity had no other idea of the soul, than that it was material. TERTULLIAN, ARNOBIUS, CLEMENT of ALEXANDRIA, ORIGEN, SAINT JUSTIN, IRENAEUS, have all of them discoursed upon it; but have never spoken of it other than as a corporeal substance—as matter.”
― Paul Henri Thiry, The System of Nature

“The doctrine of spirituality, such as it now exists, offers nothing but vague ideas; or rather is the absense of all ideas.”
― Paul Henri Thiry, The System of Nature

“Laws are made with a view to maintain society; to uphold its existence; to prevent man associated, from injuring his neighbour; they are therefore competent to punish those who disturb its harmony, or those who commit actions that are injurious to their fellows;”
― Paul Henri Thiry, The System of Nature

“Doctor Clarke, says to this effect: “Conscience is the act of reflecting, by means of which I know that I think, and that my thoughts, or my actions belong to me, and not to another.”
― Paul Henri Thiry, The System of Nature

“Immuable : Dieu est immuable, c’est-à-dire n’est point susceptible de changer ; cependant nous trouvons dans ses papiers que souvent il a changé de projets, d’amis et même de religion : mais tous ces changements ne peuvent nuire à son immutabilité, ni à celle de ses prêtres immuables, qui jamais ne changent d’avis sur le dessein de mener les laïques par le nez.”
― Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach, La Théologie portative ou Dictionnaire abrégé de la religion chrétienne

“It will no doubt be argued, that as Nature contains and produces intelligent beings, either she must be herself intelligent, or else she must be governed by an intelligent cause.”
― Paul Henri Thiry, The System of Nature

“He is the work of nature.—He exists in Nature.—He is submitted to the laws of Nature.—He cannot deliver himself from them:—cannot step beyond them even in thought.”
― Paul Henri Thiry, The System of Nature

“Thus, every thing seems to authorise the conjecture, that the human species is a production peculiar to our sphere, in the position in which it is found: that when this position may happen to change, the human species will, of consequence, either be changed or will be obliged to disappear;”
― Paul Henri Thiry, The System of Nature