Michel Onfray's Quotes

God is a fiction invented by people so they do not have to face the reality of their condition.

I discovered philosophy in my youth when I read 'wildly,' and thus I was exposed to the world of ideas.

I have a big problem with Islam.

Religion is like magic. It is all about tricks.

Camus believed in dialogue and diplomacy, and enlisted his work as a philosopher to the need to find nonviolent solutions, whereas Sartre called for violent conflicts and justified terror.

For the establishment, philosophy is both an elitist and an idealist discipline: In high school, it is a compulsory subject; at university, they teach the idealist line. They are conducting a conversation with themselves.

I am a sworn atheist and therefore from my point of view the Talmud or the Koran don't constitute works of political philosophy but rather writings that stand in utter contradiction to concepts like logic, freedom, feminism, secularism, brotherhood - which are my ideals.

I believe in libertarian options because they allow an interesting management of the capital and are based on co-operation, reciprocity, contract, federation.

It's hard for me to imagine a philosopher disconnected from the world, indifferent to the cares of his country, unmoved by poverty, unemployment: I am a committed citizen.

Socialists find me too far left; Trotskyites not far enough; ecologists say I am too happy eating foie gras, defending nuclear energy and GM plants; feminists find I am not enough of a woman; anarchists a petit-bourgeois who has sold out because I believe in universal suffrage.

There were some situations where I was giving up everything I had for the band and I just expected everybody else to feel the same way. I realized I was just kidding myself.

If you really want something you just hang with it. We think our future's ahead and not behind.

With us, it's a very specific audience. If you like steak, this is it for you.

If we were to hit the level that Metallica or somebody like that hit, we'd have had a hard time dealing with it. I think it would have been our doom. It's hard for anybody at that level.

Music shouldn't be based around money or politics. Music should be a bunch of people that really do great songs together doing them together for the pursuit of having a good time.

Danny and I wrote 10 songs in seven days, which I thought might be close to the record until you probably look at some of the Beatles statistics.

Don't buy the bootlegs, save your stuff, everything's coming back out.

I believe in God.

I discovered the Clash, the Pistols, obviously the Ramones, Blondie.

I might not be Shaq, but I can be Kobe, you know?

I would have hated to been locked into music for the last 20 years and not been able to have a family.

Look at all the Misfits products that came out. We never made a dime off it.

My job is not babysitting people; my job is focusing on making the best band I possibly can.

The main thing is that this band keeps going.

We got dragged through a system and got burned by crooked lawyers, and the list goes on and on.

We have a problem now with parents stealing their kids' CDs, so the roles have been reversed.