I have no God, no morality, no law but my will. I reject the poison that they call religion, for it is nothing but a chain that binds the soul, a vile invention of the cowardly man to escape the torment of his existence. They call it virtue, they call it salvation, but I know it for what it is—a lie, a deceit, a tool to keep us submissive. I am free, and it is only in freedom that we are truly human. No divine being, no lawgiver in the heavens, will tell me how to live my life. I am my own god, and I find the meaning of life not in the bowing before the altar, but in the unshackled pursuit of my desires.
— Marquis de Sade
Contemporary
Writer, extreme libertine philosophy
