While searching through material I’ve written over the years, I came across one of my very first philosophy papers written in college. The title was, “To Believe Or Not To Believe” and had to do with my then-budding atheism. At the end of this paper was a quote I remember well. It is from a man named, Baron D’Holbach, a philosopher during the French Enlightenment (1700’s). I loved it when I first read it and I still do, so I thought I’d share it:

“To discover the true principles of Morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods. They have need only of common sense. They have only to commune with themselves, to reflect upon their own nature, to consult their visible interests, to consider the objects of society, and of the individuals who compose it; and they will easily perceive, that virtue is advantageous, and vice disadvantageous to such beings as themselves. Let us persuade men to be just, beneficent, moderate, sociable, not because such conduct is demanded by the gods, but because it is a pleasure to men. Let us advise them to abstain from vice and crime; not because they will be punished in the other world, but because they will suffer for it in this.” (sic)

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