The first and highest law must be the love of man to man. Homo homini Deus est - this is the supreme practical maxim, this is the turning point of the world's History.

Faith is essentially intolerant ... essentially because necessarily bound up with faith is the illusion that one's cause is also God's cause.

Christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling man’s unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God’s help it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and his striving to attain such a life. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason failed to give him what he really and truly desires.

For the religious the holy is truth, for the philosophic the truth is holy.

My only wish isto transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into students of the world, Christians who, by their own procession and admission, are half animal, half angel into persons, into whole persons.

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.

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