The present age ... prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence ... for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane.
Faith is essentially intolerant ... essentially because necessarily bound up with faith is the illusion that one's cause is also God's cause.
It is as clear as the sun and as evident as the day that there is no God and that there can be none.
Only he is a truly ethical, a truly human being, who has the courage to see through his own religious feelings and needs.
Christianity has in fact long vanished, not only from the reason but also from the life of mankind, and it is nothing more than a fixed idea.
