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.
atheism darkness ignorance morality nature phantom-of-religion reason truth
Download Image Share on X Share on Facebook

About This Quote

About Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach

Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach was a 18th-century French born french philosopher. Paul Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, known as d'Holbach, was a Franco-German philosopher, encyclopedist and writer, who was a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born in Edesheim, near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate, but lived and worked mainly in Paris, where he kept a salon. Read more on Wikipedia →

Themes

  • Nature — Appreciation for the natural world and our place within it
  • Truth — Meditations on honesty, authenticity, and the search for truth

More quotes by Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach

“Let education kindle only those which are truly beneficialto the human species; let it favour those alone which are really necessary to the maintenance of society. The passions of man are dangerous...”
— Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach
education nature-of-men philosophy

“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...”
— Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach
enlightenment nature-of-man truth

“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 s...”
— Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach
atheism fear ignorance imaginary

“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...”
— Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach
atheism religion

“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
atheism atheist destruction god-of-the-gaps

“All children are atheists, they have no idea of God.”
— Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach
atheism atheist atheists belief
View all quotes by Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach →

Related Quotes

“There is only one God and all atheists will learn that after their deaths”
— Munia Khan
atheism atheist death death-and-dying

“Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness...”
— Thomas A. Edison
atheism contradiction fable gods

“Nobody that has seen a baby born can believe in god for a second. When you see your child born, and the panic, and the amount of technology that is saving the life of the two people you love most i...”
— Penn Jillette
atheism childbirth love nature

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
darkness drive-out hate inspirational

“Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce that it is not genteel comedy even that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundes...”
— Henry James Sr.
darkness intelligence life pain

“Let us love. Let our lives be a perpetual song of love for God, first of all, and for all human beings who suffer, love, and mourn. Let deep joy live in us. Let us be like the lark, enemy of the ni...”
— Elizabeth LeSeur
darkness light love spirituality

“We kill all the caterpillars, then complain there are no butterflies.”
— John Marsden, The Dead of Night
ignorance nature

“Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.”
— Dalai Lama XIV
ignorance peace

“You can be used by someone for their aims when you are not aware of your true being”
— Sunday Adelaja
ignorance lack-of-awareness people-aims purpose