[T]ruth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred

The doctrine of foods is of great ethical and political significance. Food becomes blood, blood becomes heart and brain, thoughts and mind stuff. Human fare is the foundation of human culture and thought. Would you improve a nation? Give it, instead of declamations against sin, better food. Man is what he eats [Der Mensch ist, was er isst].

As we expand our knowledge of good books, we shrink the circle of men whose company we appreciate.

Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity.

To theology, ... only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred.

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.

Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever the right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established.