Paul Henry Dietrich Holbach citáty

„Nejvíc potřebuje člověk ke svému štěstí jiného člověka.“

„Člověk je nešťasten proto, že nezná přírodu.“

„Člověk je dílem přírody, existuje v přírodě, nemůže se od ní izolovat, nemůže - a to ani v myšlení - se z přírody vyabstrahovat.“

Varianta: Člověk je nešťastný proto, že nerozumí přírodě.

„Lidé přikládají největší důležitost právě tomu, co nedovedou pochopit.“

„Pouliční láska nemá v sobě ani zdaleka tolik sklonů ke zločinnosti jako klášterní zdrženlivost, protože je veřejná.“

Zdroj: Vaněk, Zdeněk, Kaleidoskop, Zdeněk Vaněk, Plzeň, 2009, 1, 420, 978-80-254-5071-0, http://kaleidoskop.webz.cz/Kaleidoskop.pdf, 34

„Svoboda přestává být jedním z práv občana, jestliže ji občan používá ke škodě svých spoluobčanů.“

“We are all just cogs in a machine, doing what we were always meant to do, with no actual volition.”

Zdroj: Kaleidoskop. Str. 210.

Paul Henry Dietrich Holbach: Citáty anglicky

“When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon, than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths, or to reject absurdities, and palpable contradictions.”

“All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God.”

Good Sense without God, or, Freethoughts Opposed to Supernatural Ideas (London: W. Stewart & Co., ca. 1900) ( Project Gutenberg e-text http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/gsens10.txt), preface <br class="br">Translator unknown. Original publication in French at Amsterdam, 1772, as Le bon sens ("Common Sense"), and often attributed to John Meslier.

“Now, if the ignorance of nature gave birth to Gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.”

ibid., chap. 30

“Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him in ignorance of his real duties and true interests. It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of Religion, that we shall discover Truth, Reason, and Morality. Religion diverts us from the causes of evils, and from the remedies which nature prescribes; far from curing, it only aggravates, multiplies, and perpetuates them.”

La Système de la nature; quoted in The Law of Reason, published by J. Thompson, p. 40.
Varianta: Now, if the ignorance of nature gave birth to Gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.

“Savage and furious nations, perpetually at war, adore, under diverse names, some God, conformable to their ideas, that is to say, cruel, carnivorous, selfish, blood-thirsty.”

ibid., chap. 206

“It is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.”

ibid., preface

“Suns are extinguished or become corrupted, planets perish and scatter across the wastes of the sky; other suns are kindled, new planets formed to make their revolutions or describe new orbits, and man, an infinitely minute part of a globe which itself is only an imperceptible point in the immense whole, believes that the universe is made for himself.”

Baron d'Holbach kniha The System of Nature

Samuel Wilkinson, trans., The System of Nature ( Project Gutenberg e-text http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/7son110.txt), vol. 1, chap. IX <br class="br">Date and place of publication unknown. Original publication in French, 1770, as La Système de la nature, under the name of Jean Baptiste de Mirabaud.

“Everything that passes in the world, proves to us, in the clearest manner, that it is not governed by an intelligent being.”

La Système de la nature; quoted by Norman Hampson, The Enlightenment p. 220 (paperback edition)