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.

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.

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.

He only is a true atheist to whom the predicates of the Divine Being - for example, love, wisdom and justice - are nothing.

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

What yesterday was still religion is no longer such today; and what today is atheism, tomorrow will be religion.

It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But, on the contrary, man created God in his own image.