QuoteProject
[T]ruth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred
Ludwig Feuerbach
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote suggests that society often values falsehoods over the harsh realities of truth.

Ludwig Feuerbach's quote highlights a philosophical critique of society's tendency to embrace comforting illusions while dismissing the often uncomfortable and raw nature of truth. It posits that many people find solace in illusions because they provide a sense of security and belonging, even when they are not aligned with reality. In this light, truth is portrayed as something dangerous or taboo, suggesting that confronting it can lead to discomfort, while illusions are revered and preserved, often at the expense of genuine understanding.

Themes

TruthIllusionRealityComfortSociety

In practice

Example use cases

During a philosophical lecture on the nature of reality and perception.

More from Ludwig Feuerbach

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.
Ludwig FeuerbachRead
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.
Ludwig FeuerbachRead
To theology, ... only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred.
Ludwig FeuerbachRead
In the consciousness of the infinite, the conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his own nature.
Ludwig FeuerbachRead
This work, though it deals only with eating and drinking, which are regarded in the eyes of our supernaturalistic mock-culture as the lowest acts, is of the greatest philosophic significance and importance... How former philosophers have broken their heads over the question of the bond between body and soul! Now we know, on scientific grounds, what the masses know from long experience, that eating and drinking hold together body and soul, that the searched-for bond is nutrition.
Ludwig FeuerbachRead
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].
Ludwig FeuerbachRead

Similar quotes

Power is the ability to define phenomena, and make it act in a desired manner.
Huey NewtonRead
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn't be a great moral teacher. He'd be either a lunatic on a level with a man who says he's a poached egg or else he'd be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.
C. S. LewisRead
Yoga is a generic name for any discipline by which one attempts to pass out of the limits of one's ordinary mental consciousness into a greater spiritual consciousness.
Sri AurobindoRead
We are not meant to die merely in order to be dead. God could not want that for the creatures to whom He has given the breath of life. We die in order to live.
Elisabeth ElliotRead
Explanations are such cheap poetry.
Stephen KingRead
Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
Leo TolstoyRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.