...Men do not sufficiently realize
that their future is in their own hands.
Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not.
Theirs is the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live,
or intend to make just the extra effort required
for fulfilling, even on this refractory planet,
the essential function of the universe,
which is a machine for the making of gods.

Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. (tr. by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox)

I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years been working to undo the botched job your god has made.

Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.

That the gods die from time to time is due to man’s sudden discovery that they do not mean anything, that they are made by human hands, useless idols of wood and stone.

Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is indeed man’s self-consciousness and self-awareness as long as he has not found his feet in the universe.

If the gods do a shameful thing, they are not gods.

One's own religion is after all a matter between oneself and one's Maker and no one else's.

For the deeds of a man, not the words of a prophecy, are what shape his destiny.

But if man is free to define for himself the conditions of a life which is valid in his own eyes, can he not choose whatever he likes and act however he likes? Dostoievsky asserted, “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.” Today’s believers use this formula for their own advantage. To re-establish man at the heart of his destiny is, they claim, to repudiate all ethics. However, far from God’s absence authorizing all license, the contrary is the case, because man is abandoned on the earth, because his acts are definitive, absolute engagements. He bears the responsibility for a world which is not the work of a strange power, but of himself, where his defeats are inscribed, and his victories as well.

Do you want me to say that men create gods to enforce their definitions of good and evil?

Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.

It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.

man became overrational and forgot the gods and demons, relegating them to the realm of outworn superstitions. He looked for them in the skies and found only infinite spaces, dead rocks, and orbs of burning gas. He looked for them in thunder and wind and found only unintelligent forces of the atmosphere. He looked for them in woods and caverns and found only scuttling animals, creaking branches, shadows, and drafts. He thought that the gods were dead but in fact they became much more alive and dangerous because they were able to work unrecognized.