For the preoccupation of these miserable creatures consists not only in finding that before which I or another may bow down, but in finding something that everyone can come to believe in and bow down before, and that it should indeed be everyone, and that they should do it all together. It is this need for a community of bowing-down that has been the principal torment of each individual person and of mankind as a whole since the earliest ages.  For the sake of a universal bowing-down they have destroyed one another with the sword.  They have created gods and challenged one another: 'Give up your gods and come and worship ours or else death to you and to your gods!'  And so it will be until the world's end, when even gods will vanish from the world: whatever happens, they will fall down before idols.'  

• grand inquisitor
• humanity
• religion
• death
• will
• community
• gods
• fall