The strongest intimidation, by the way, is the invention of a hereafter with a hell everlasting.

If one shifts the center of gravity of life out of life into the “Beyond” – into nothingness – one has deprived life as such of its center of gravity. The great lie of personal immortality destroys all rationality, all naturalness of instinct, all that is salutary, all that is life-furthering.

Man is the cruelest animal," says Zarathustra. "When gazing at tragedies, bull-fights, crucifixations he hath hitherto felt happier than at any other time on Earth. And when he invented Hell...lo, Hell was his Heaven on Earth"; he could put up with suffering now, by contemplating the eternal punishment of his oppressors in the other world.

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a ''new heaven'' first found the power thereto in his own hell.

Your god is dead and only the ignorant weep. And if you claim there is a hell, then we shall meet there!

I had to get rid of any idea of hell or any idea of the afterlife. That's what held me, kept me down. So now I just have nothing but contempt for the institution of the church.