Julien Offray de La Mettrie

"Children are born entirely material creatures; culture layers myth upon them later."

"What we call conscience is merely the internalization of social conditioning."

"Guilt is the body's pain caused by social disapproval."

"Fear and hope are the two springs that move the mechanical man."

"Courage is simply the calculated assessment that present pain serves future advantage."

"Cowardice and bravery differ only in how the machine calculates danger."

"Change is the nature of all matter; permanence is illusion."

"Nothing remains the same from one moment to the next; all flows eternally."

"History records merely the mechanical adjustments of masses seeking comfort."

"Progress is the gradual refinement of how efficiently we serve our appetites."

"Technology is nothing but nature understood and applied."

"The machine of state requires constant maintenance and repair."

"War arises inevitably when machines compete for the same resources."

"Peace is merely the temporary exhaustion that follows conflict."

"Justice is whatever distribution serves the greatest mechanical harmony."

"Poverty is not a moral failure but a mechanical disadvantage."

"Wealth is simply the power to move matter according to one's desires."

"The pursuit of money is noble insofar as it sustains the machine."

"Labor is the body's natural function; idleness is its disease."

"Rest is not peace but the temporary restoration of mechanical capacity."

"Suffering is the machine's signal that something requires adjustment."

"Pleasure is the machine's signal that it operates in proper harmony."

"The virtuous man is simply the efficient machine."

"Vice is mere mechanical dysfunction, not moral corruption."

"God, if he exists, is indistinguishable from nature itself."

"Religion is the comfort tale told to the machine before it wears out."

"The afterlife is the fantasy of those who cannot bear death's finality."

"We should pity rather than condemn those enslaved by superstition."

"Reason is the body's highest mechanical achievement."

"Logic operates no differently than the gears of a clock."