The desire to please, the devotion to tradition, the fear of appearing ridiculous and the fear of slandering people - these are incentives that are much stronger than religious views.
One may think that religious morality is invented only to destroy society and turn people into primitive beings.
Morality would be a useless science if it did not know how to show man that his greatest interest is to be virtuous.
Morality is the only cult, the only natural religion of man on earth, the only one that should concern him in this world. Only by fulfilling the requirements of this morality can we consider ourselves to be fulfilling God's will. If indeed God created man in His image and likeness, then He certainly also endowed him with the instinct of preservation and aspiration for happiness. If God created us to be able to think, it means that he wanted us to be able to use this thinking, to distinguish evil from good, useful from harmful. If He created us to be sociable, it means that He wanted us to live in society and tend to its welfare.
Morality has nothing in common with religion...religion does not serve as a basis for morality, it is rather hostile to it. True morality must be based on human nature; religious morality will always develop under the chimeras and despotism of those men who endow God with language, and who, for the most part, contradict the essence and nature of man.
An enthroned sage would be the happiest of mortals.
Very often we meet wise men who continue to be followers of childish prejudices... But sometimes the victims of superstitions become brilliant men; the imagination which is characteristic of them increases their wandering, and binds them more and more to some opinions of which they would feel ashamed if they were allowed to have recourse to their own reason... The man of sound judgment thinks rationally about every object , but when it comes to religion, it goes back to childhood.
God did not make man in His image and likeness, but man, from time immemorial, created God in his image, endowing Him with his reason and qualities, but especially with his shortcomings.
Ignorance is the first premise of faith and that is why the church values it so much.
It is not enough to be rich to be happy; it is important to know how to use wealth.
Ignorance of natural causes forced people to create their own gods, and then deception turned them into something hideous.
Ignorance of nature is the root of those unknown forces which have so long terrified the human race, and of those superstitious dogmas which have been the source of all its misfortunes.
A joker remarked that "the true religion is always the one on whose side the king and the executioner are."
No man can be a hero in the eyes of his servant. It is not surprising that God, of whom the priests make a scarecrow for others, scares them a little and almost does not influence their behavior.
God will not be able to do anything to a man who is so reckless that he disregards the opinion of others, ignores decency, breaks the law, and condemns himself to the mockery and curse of his neighbor. Any man with judgment will very easily understand that in this world the esteem and love of one's neighbor are absolutely necessary to be happy and that for those who harm themselves through their own vices and arouse the contempt of society towards them, life becomes a very heavy burden.
There is no need to believe in God, it would be wiser to forget him altogether.
You cannot live happily if you are always trembling with fear.
Morality is the science of the relationships that exist between people and the obligations that arise from these relationships.
Oh, if only the states that make up the globe were small, and if only they were proportional to the talent of those who govern them!
The hope of a future paradise and the fear of the torments to come have proven to be an obstacle for people in their path to happiness here on earth. It served only to torment and exhaust some weak and gullible souls, and could not stop any man, drawn by strong passions or ingrained habits.
The basis of friendly attraction is those advantages which so-called friends tend to obtain from each other. Deprive them of these advantages and their friendship ceases to exist.
The superstitious man should be treated as the alcoholic; superstition is a chronic but curable disease. Of course, you can never be sure that the disease will not recur.
Abandon for ever all superstitions which are apt to bring only misfortune, let your only religion be moral; let happiness be your end, and reason your guide, and let you find in yourselves virtue enough to accomplish this end, let this virtue be your only God. To love virtue and live in virtue - this is the only way to worship God. If there really is a God who cares about his creatures, an impartial, good and wise God, he will not reject you for following reason.
The followers of a jealous, vengeful and cruel God - so it seems that the God of the Jews and Christians - can be considered neither reserved, nor patient, nor humane. Those who believe in a God who can be offended by the thoughts and beliefs of his weak creatures, who condemns to eternal torments, to total extermination those who preach another religion, they too are impatient, cruel and unforgiving.
To worship God is to worship a fiction created by the human imagination or, more simply, someone who does not exist.
To think that we are bound to believe in things which are not accessible to our reason is as absurd as to say that God requires us to fly without wings.
Justice is the basis of all social virtues.
Devotion to any belief system is nothing but the result of habits. It is as difficult for the reason to refuse the usual way of thinking and to accept other beliefs as it is for the body to act and live without using its faculties and organs.
The natural difference between men makes equality of their wealth impossible. Vain would be the attempts to make common the wealth of individuals who are not equal in skill and power, in ingenuity and active character.
There is no point in trying to cure people of evil without exterminating their prejudices.