The concept of God was for a long time the place where the idea was kept alive that there are other norms besides those to which nature and society g… - Max Horkheimer

In the face of the idea that truth might afford the opposite of satisfaction and turn out to be completely shocking to humanity at any given historical moment, … the fathers of pragmatism made the satisfaction of the subject the criterion of truth. For such a doctrine there is no possibility of rejecting or even criticizing any species of belief that is enjoyed by its adherents.

The inversion of external compulsion into the compulsion of conscience … produces the machine-like assiduity and pliable allegiance required by the new rationality.

If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate—in short, emancipation of fear—then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service reason can render.