Ludwig Feuerbach

“ God is an indispensable thought, a necessity of thought. But how is it possible that this necessity should simply express the subjective, and not the objective also?—how is it possible that God—if he is to exist for us, to be an object to us—must necessarily be thought, if he is in himself like a block, indifferent whether he be thought, cognized or not? ”

“ God has his consciousness in man, and man his being in God? Man’s knowledge of God is God’s knowledge of himself? What a divorcing and contradiction! The true statement is this: man’s knowledge of God is man’s knowledge of himself, of his own nature. ”

“ It is true that religion also makes the fact of God being thought into the self-thinking of God; but because this process goes forward behind its consciousness, since God is immediately presupposed as a self-existent personal being, the religious consciousness only embraces the indifference of the two facts.
Even religion, however, does not abide by this indifference of the two sides. God creates in order to reveal himself: creation is the revelation of God. But for stones, plants, and animals there is no God, but only for man ”

“ Only the unity of being and consciousness is truth. Where the consciousness of God is, there is the being of God,—in man, therefore; in the being of God it is only thy own being which is an object to thee, and what presents itself before thy consciousness is simply what lies behind it. If the divine qualities are human, the human qualities are divine. ”

“ God is a Self only in the human self,—only in the human power of discrimination, in the principle of difference that lies in the human being. Thus compassion is only felt as a me, a self, a force, i.e., as something special, through its opposite. The opposite of God gives qualities to God, realizes him, makes him a Self. God is God, only through that which is not God. ”

“ Man is nothing without God; but also, God is nothing without man; [1] for only in man is God an object as God; only in man is he God. The various qualities of man first give difference, which is the ground of reality in God. The physical qualities of man make God a physical being—God the Father, who is the creator of Nature, i.e., the personified, anthropomorphized essence of Nature; [2] the intellectual qualities of man make God an intellectual being, the moral, a moral being. Human misery is the triumph of divine compassion; sorrow for sin is the delight of the divine holiness. ”

“ In order to make God free and independent of all that is human, he is regarded as a formal, real person, his thinking is confined within himself, and the fact of his being thought is excluded from him, and is represented as occurring in another being. ”

“ In every theory of the identity of the divine and human which is not true identity, unity of the human nature with itself, there still lies at the foundation a division, a separation into two, since the identity is immediately abolished, or rather is supposed to be abolished. ”

“ Far more reasonable, therefore, is the empirical religious consciousness, which makes God reveal, i.e., realize himself in real man, real nature, and according to which man is created purely for the praise and glory of God. ”

“ What is a power, a property, which does not exhibit, attest itself? What is a force which effects nothing? a light that does not illuminate? a wisdom which knows nothing, i.e., nothing real? And what is omnipotence, what all other divine attributes, if man does not exist? ”

“ Every theory of this kind is in contradiction with itself and with the understanding,—is a half measure—a thing of the imagination—a perversion, a distortion; which, however, the more perverted and false it is, all the more appears to be profound. ”

“ This temporal, transitory life in this world (i.e. natural life) we have through God, who is the almighty Creator of heaven and earth. But the eternal untransitory life we have through the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. ”

“ For example:—Whether I be a good or sympathetic being—for that alone is good which gives, imparts itself, bonum est communicativum sui,—is unknown to me before the opportunity presents itself of showing goodness to another being. ”