"The inward persuasion that we are free to……" — Baron d'Holbach
"The inward persuasion that we are free to do, or not to do a thing, is but a mere illusion. If we trace the true principle of our actions, we shall find, that they are always necessary consequences of our volitions and desires, which are never in our power. You think yourself free, because you do what you will; but are you free to will, or not to will; to desire, or not to desire? Are not your volitions and desires necessarily excited by objects or qualities totally independent of you?"
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Baron d'Holbach
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31 Quotes by Baron d'Holbach
Baron d'Holbach has 31 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance and ferocity.
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Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him in ignorance of his real duties and…
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It is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.
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The universe, that vast assemblage of every thing that exists, presents only matter and motion: the whole offers to our…
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What has been said of [God] is either unintelligible or perfectly contradictory; and for this reason must appear impossible to…
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Nature, you say, is totally inexplicable without a God. That is to say, to explain what you understand very little,…
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The atheist . . . destroys the chimeras which afflict the human race, and so leads men back to nature,…
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How could the human mind progress, while tormented with frightful phantoms, and guided by men, interested in perpetuating its ignorance…
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Can theology give to the mind the ineffable boon of conceiving that which no man is in a capacity to…
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Tolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes to religious fanaticism.
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When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon, than common sense; or, in other…
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Savage and furious nations, perpetually at war, adore, under diverse names, some God, conformable to their ideas, that is to…
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More Action Quotes
This quote is filed under Action Quotes,
one of 8,300 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
— Hannah Arendt
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Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then…
— Hannah Arendt
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Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
— Hannah Arendt
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Action without a name, a who attached to it, is meaningless.
— Hannah Arendt
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All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.
— Aristotle
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Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate…
— Aristotle
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Well begun is half done.
— Aristotle
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A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole…
— Aristotle
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Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.
— Aristotle
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We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.
— Aristotle
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Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for…
— Aristotle
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What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition…
— Aristotle
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