"Not even God can change the past" -AGATHON.

"Who we are never changes, who we think we are does." -M. S. ALMANAC

"I tried to reach for God and stumbled upon myself." -ST. ANSELM.

"Of all gods love is the best friend of men" -ARISTOPHANES.

"From the hour of their birth some are marked out by subjection and others by command." –ARISTOTLE

"Bad is the lordship of many; let one be your ruler and master." -ARISTOTLE
"Silence is a woman's glory." -ARISTOTLE
"Men distinguished in philosophy, politics, poetry or art appear to be all of a melancholy temperament." ARISTOTLE

"Only social control can give man virtue." -ARISTOTLE
"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have these because we have acted rightly." -ARISTOTLE
"Virtues are formed in man by his doing of actions." -ARISTOTLE

"When men are friends, justice is unnecessary; but when we are just friendship is still a boon." -ARISTOTLE
"Radicalism is a luxury of stability; we may dare to change things only when things lay steady under our hands." W. DURANT on ARISTOTLE
"The good citizen should be able to obey and command rightly." -ARISTOTLE

"Young men are easily deceived because they are quick to hope." -ARISTOTLE
"Woman is an unfinished man." -ARISTOTLE
"My goal: to admire or marvel at nothing." -ARISTOTLE

"Are not the pleasures of the affections greater than the pleasures of the senses, and are not the pleasures of the intellect greater than the pleasures of the affections?" -F. BACON
"The inquiry of truth which is the love making or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth which is the praise of it and the belief of truth which is the enjoying of it is the sovereign good of human nature." -F. BACON

"Nature is often hidden; sometimes overcome; seldom extinguished. Force makes nature more violent in return; doctrine and disguise make nature less importune; but custom only does alter or subdue nature...But let not a man trust his victory over his nature too far; for nature will lay buried a great time, and yet revive upon the occasion or temptation...Therefore let a man avoid the occasion altogether or put himself often to it." -F. BACON
"Strength of nature in youth passes many excesses which are owing a man till his age." -F. BACON
"Men ought to know that in the theater of human life it is only for gods and angels to be spectators." -F. BACON
"A married man is seven years older the first day." -F. BACON

"The surest way to prevent seditions...is to take away the matter of them." F. BACON
"Government and science suffer in the lack of philosophy." -F. BACON
"The human understanding from its peculiar nature supposes a greater degree of order and regularity in things, than it really finds." -F. BACON

"Having first determined the question according to his will, man then resorts to experience; and bending her into conformity with his placets leads her out like a captive in procession." -F. BACON
"Let every student of nature take this as a rule: whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction, is to be held in suspicion and that so much the more care is to be taken in dealing with such questions, to keep understanding even and clear." -F. BACON

"Everyone has a cave or den of his own which refracts and discolor the light of nature." -F. BACON
"Men converse by means of language; but words are imposed according to the understanding of the crowd, and there arises from a lad and inapt formation of words, a wonderful obstruction to the mind." -F. BACON

"There are idols which have mingled into men's minds from the various dogmas of philosophers and also from wrong laws of demonstration." -F. BACON
"If a man will begin with certainties he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties." -F. BACON

"The wit and mind of man if they work upon the matter, work according to the stuff, and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself as the spider works his web, then it is endless and brings indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fitness of thread and work but of no substance or profit." -F. BACON

"Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them and wise men use them." -F. BACON
"Without philosophy I care not to live." -F. BACON
"A man is but what he knows." F. BACON
"Perhaps the most useful item in the technique of induction is the 'table of more or less,' which lists instances in which to qualities or conditions increase or decrease together, and so reveals a causal relation between the simultaneously varying phenomena. (heat and motion) -W. DURANT on F. BACON

"Each moment is not only something new, but something unforeseeable…" H. BERGSON

"For a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating one’s self endlessly." -H. BERGSON

"Consciousness slips when it is permitted into the restful automatism of instinct, habit and sleep." –H. BERGSON

"The time given to refutation in philosophy is usually time lost. Of the many attacks directed by the many thinkers against each other, what now remains? Very little. That which counts and endures is the modicum of positive truth which each contributes." –H. BERGSON

"The true statement is of itself able to displace the erroneous idea and becomes, without our having taken the trouble of refuting anyone, the best of refutations." -BERGSON

"Happy the man who learned the causes of things, and has put under his feet all fear, and inexorable fate and the noisy strife of the hell of greed." -BIAS

"Individuality creates humanity." -BUBER.

"A world in order cannot be an ordered world" -BUBER.

"A person exists by entering relations with other people." -BUBER

"Love is the responsibility of an I for a thou." -BUBER. "If we go on our own way and meet a man who has advanced towards us and also gone his own way, we know only our part of the way not his. His we experience only in the meeting." -BUBER.

"If we believe in nothing, if nothing has meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then anything is possible and nothing has any importance." -A. CAMUS

"When words lose their meaning the people suffer in the loss of their freedom." -CONFUCIUS

"Success is a journey, not a destination" -D. CHOPRA

"Without courage, all other values lose their meaning" -W. CHURCHILL.

"There is nothing so absurd as that which is found in the books of philosophers." -CICERO

"Philosophy is the generalization of the results of all sciences." –A. COMTE

"I think therefore I am" -R. DESCARTES.

"Not perfection as a final goal, but the ever enduring process of perfecting, maturing and refining, is the aim in living." –J. DEWEY

"Suffering is the only cause of consciousness" -F. DOSTOYEVSKY.

"Man only takes notices of his sorrows, he takes his happiness for granted" -F. DOSTOYEVSKY.

"Pain and suffering are inevitable for persons of broad awareness and depth of heart" -F. DOSTOYEVSKY.

"The meaning of death is that it gives life absolute value." -DOSTOYEVSKY

"Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art." -W. DURANT

"Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt -particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms." -W.DURANT

"In truth the world is neither with us nor against us; it is but raw material in our hands and can be heaven or hell according to what we are." –W. DURANT "Those who suffer much become very bitter or very gentle." -W. DURANT

"One must not always think too much about what one should do, but rather what one should be." –M.C. ECKHART

"Passion is the legitimate end of life and action." -EPICURUS
"We must not avoid pleasures, but we must select them." EPICURUS

"Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds." -G. ELIOT
"The way we choose depends in the way we are" -J.G. FITCHE.

"Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise." -S. FREUD

"Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err." -GHANDI

"There is more to life than increasing its speed." –M. GHANDI

"God is real, but outside existence." -J. GISHE

"Philosophy helps you decide who you are." -J. GISHE

"We are not the truth we seek." -J. GISHE
"You may not be able to asphyxiate yourself with your own hands, but you can jump off a bridge." –J. GISHE

"At the very core of existence, nothingness is dissolving being into nothing."-M. HEIDEGGER.

"Every idea is a group of relations; we can think of something only by relating it to something else." –HEGEL

"Reason is the substance of the universe…the design of the world is absolutely rational." -HEGEL

"Know in thyself and All one self-same soul; banish the dream that sunders part from whole." –HINDU POEM

"The search for happiness is one of the main sources of unhappiness" -E. HOFFER.

"He who does not understand your silence will not understand your words."-E. HUBBARD.

"Beauty in things exists only in the mind that contemplates them" -D. HUME.
"After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the universe is music." -A. HUXLEY.

"Neither flattery nor threats count with a man who knows his mind." –H.IBSEN

"The true is only the expedient in the way of our thinking." –W. JAMES

"That which is more personal, is most common" -C. JUNG.

"Experience is by no means the only field to which our understanding can be confined. Experience tells us what is, but not what it must be necessarily what it is and not otherwise. It therefore never gives us any really general truths; and our reason which is particularly anxious for that class of knowledge, is roused by it rather than satisfied. General truths which at the same time bear the character of an inward necessity, must be independent of experience, clear and certain in themselves." –I. KANT

"We shall never have any experience which we shall not interpret in terms of space and time and cause; but we shall never have any philosophy if we forget that these are not things, but modes of interpretations and understanding." KANT

"We know that we must avoid behavior which , if adopted by all men, would render social life impossible." –KANT

"Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself; and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as mere means for some external purpose." -KANT

"It remains completely unknown to us what objects may be by themselves and apart from the receptivity of our senses. We know nothing but our manner of perceiving them; that manner being particular to us, and not necessarily shared by every being, though, no doubt, by every human being." -KANT

"Prayer doesn't change God, but it changes the one who prays" -S. KIERKEGAARD.

"Faith and knowledge are fundamentally different; thus one cannot be the substitute of the other." -S. KIERKEGAARD.
"In all our ‘freedom’, we seek one thing: to be able to live without responsibility."-KIERKEGAARD

"The attempt to infer existence from thought is a contradiction. For thought takes existence away from the real by abrogating its actuality and translating it into the field of the impossible." -S. KIERKEGAARD.

"It is commonly assumed that no art or skill is required to be subjective. To be sure every human being is a bit of a subject, in a sense. But now to try to become what one already is: who would take the pains to waste his time on such a task involving the greatest imaginable degree of resignation! For this reason it is a very difficult task, the most difficult of all tasks." -S. KIERKEGAARD.

"Passion is the culmination of existence for an existing individual." -S. KIERKEGAARD.
"One must be objective towards oneself and subjective towards all others." -S. KIERKEGAARD.
"An objective acceptance of Christianity is either paganism or thoughtlessness." -S. KIERKEGAARD.

"Love is within everyone's reach and it's independent of external circumstances." -S. KIERKEGAARD.

"Why is it that people prefer to be addressed in groups, rather than individually?" –KIERKEGAARD

"The true individual can endure being alone without the understanding of others. He will be thoroughly misunderstood." –KIERKEGAARD

"The majority of people are not only afraid of holding a wrong opinion. They are afraid of holding an opinion alone." –KIERKEGAARD

"The deep fault of the human race is that there are no individuals anymore." –KIERKEGAARD

"Wanting to hide in the crowd, to be a little fraction of the group instead of being an individual, is the most corrupt of all escapes…God in heaven does not talk to us as an assembly; he speaks to each individually. This is why the most ruinous evasion of all is to be hidden away in a herd in an attempt to escape God’s personal address." –KIERKEGAARD

"With respect to physical existence, one needs little, and to the degree that one needs less, the more perfect one is. In a human being’s relationship with God however, it is inverted: the more one needs God the more perfect he is. To need God is nothing to be ashamed of but is perfection itself. It is the saddest thing in the world if a human being goes through life without discovering that he needs God! For what is a human being after all? Is he just one more ornament in the vast array of creation? And what is his power? What is the highest he is able to will? Well, we do not want to defraud the highest of its price, but we cannot conceal the fact that the highest is realized only when a person is fully convinced that he himself is capable of nothing at all." –KIERKEGAARD

"A human being is great and at his highest only when before God he recognizes that he is nothing in himself." –KIERKEGAARD

"The person who in truth wills the good thinks only of the good, not of some resulting benefit. For the good is its own reward." –KIERKEGAARD

"Much of what you are able to keep hidden in darkness you only first get to know by revealing it to the All Knowing One." –KIERKEGAARD

"It is out of God’s infinite love that he involves himself with every human being." –KIERKKEGAARD

"Life is what happens when you are making other plans." –J. LENNON

"The mind knows not things immediately, but only by the interventions of ideas it has of them." -J. LOCKE
"If we lose the ability to perceive our own faults, what is the good of living on?" -MARCUS AURELIUS

"Most people in the world want security, not liberty" -H.L. MENCKEN.

"Personal relationships override all the distinctions which differentiate people. A personal relationship between any two persons it's possible because it is based on the fact that they are both persons." -McMURRAY.

"Belief means nothing, for it is only the adoption of guiding principles without reason." -F.NIETZSCHE
"Men believe in the truth of everything which is visibly, strongly believed."-F.NIETZSCHE

"It is not the strength of his great feelings, but rather their duration that is the mark of a great man." -F. NIETZCHE

"One who reaches his ideal, has by so doing gone beyond it." -F. NIETZCHE
"Knowledge would have only slight allure if there wasn't so much shame to overcome in achieving it." -F. NIETZCHE

"Men and women have the same emotions, but at a different tempo." -F. NIETZCHE
"'To pity everyone' that would be to chastise and tyrannize yourself!" -F. NIETZCHE

"Dreadful experiences make us wonder whether the person who experiences them may not be something dreadful." -F. NIETZCHE

"Is there anyone who has not at times maintained his good reputation by sacrificing himself?" -F. NIETZCHE

"A person who despises himself, still respects himself as a despiser." -F. NIETZCHE

"In affability there is no hatred for mankind -that is why there is all too much contempt." -F. NIETZCHE

"A man's maturity: having rediscovered the seriousness he had as a child at play." -F. NIETZCHE

"Being ashamed of our immorality is one step on the ladder that leads to being also ashamed of our morality." -F. NIETZCHE

"It is a terrible thing to die of thirst in the ocean. Does your truth have to be so salty that it can no longer even quench thirst?" -F. NIETZCHE

"Behind all her personal vanity, a woman still harbors her own impersonal contempt for women." -F. NIETZCHE

"If you bind and enchain your heart, you can give your spirit many liberties." -F. NIETZCHE

"Love for someone is barbarous, for it is practiced at the sake of everyone else." -F. NIETZCHE

"The degree and nature of a person's sexuality extends into the highest pinnacle of his spirit." -F. NIETZCHE

"We begin to distrust very clever people when they become embarrassed." -F. NIETZCHE

"Pleasure is man’s transition from a lesser state of perfection to a greater. I say transition; for pleasure is not perfection itself: if a man were born into perfection…he would be without the emotion of pleasure." –NIETZCHE

"Speak thereon ye wisest men, however bad it may be. To be silent is worse; all unuttered truths become poisonous." –NIETZCHE

"What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; what can be loved in man is that he is a transition and a destruction." –NIETZCHE

"Will nothing beyond your capacities… be not virtuous beyond your ability; and demand nothing of yourself contrary to probability." –NIETZCHE

"Philosophical systems are shining mirages; what we see is not the long sought truth, but the reflection of our own desires." –NIETZCHE

"The philosophers pose as though their real opinions had been discovered through the self evolving of a cold, pure divinely indifferent dialectic… where as in fact a prejudicial idea, proposition or suggestion, which is generally their heart’s desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments sought out after the event." –NIETZCHE

"People believe they’re unselfish in love because they seek the advantage of another being, often in opposition of their own. But doing so they want to posses the other being." –NIETZCHE

"There were two contradictory valuations of human behavior, two ethical standpoints and criteria: a morality of masters and a morality of the herd. The former was accepted standard in classical antiquity, especially among the Romans; even for the ordinary Roman virtue was virtuous manhood, courage, enterprise, and bravery. But from Asia, especially from the Jews in the days of their political subjection, came the other standard; subjection breeds humility, helplessness breeds altruism, which is an appeal for help. Under this herd morality love of danger and power gave way to love of security and peace; strength was replaced by cunning, open by secret revenge, sternness by pity, initiative by imitation, the pride of honor by the whip of conscience. Honor is pagan, Roman, feudal, aristocratic; conscience is Jewish, Christian, bourgeois, democratic. It was the eloquence of the prophets from Amos to Jesus, that made the view of a subject class an almost universal ethic; the world and the flesh became synonymous of evil, and poverty a proof of virtue." WD on NIETZCHE

"Man is the cruelest animal." –NIETZCHE

"The ultimate ethic is biological; we must judge things according to their value for life; we need a ‘transvaluation of all values and morals’." –NIETZCHE

"Mankind does not improve, it does not even exist –it is an abstraction. All that exists is a vast anthill of individuals. The aspect of the whole is much more like that of a huge experimental workshop where some things in every age succeed, while most things fail; and the aim of all the experiments is not the happiness of the mass, but the improvement of the type. Better that societies should come to an end than that no higher type should appear." –NIETZCHE

"He is commanded who cannot obey his own self." -NIETZCHE

"You shall find the truth and the truth will make you odd" -F. O'CONNOR.

"To be born is to be chosen" -J. O'DONOHUE.
"The face is a threshold where a world looks out and a world looks in on itself" -J. O'DONOHUE.

""Let me write the songs of a nation and I care not who makes its laws." -D. O'CONNELL

Prayer is the best armor we have; it opens the heart of God" -PADRE PIO.

"We know truth not only by reason, but also by the heart." -B. PASCAL

"The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it." -B. PASCAL

"If natural things are beyond reason, what will be said of supernatural ones?" -B. PASCAL

"Man is but a reed, the weakest thing in nature, but he's a thinking reed" -B. PASCAL.

"The heart has reasons which reason cannot understand" -B. PASCAL.

"The man who speaks the truth is always at ease." -PERSIAN SAYING

"Justice is having and doing what is one's own." -PLATO
"He who is less than just is less than man." –PLATO

"At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet."-PLATO

"Everything is becoming, nothing is" -PLATO.

"The happy are made happy by the acquisition of good things" -PLATO.
"Being is the matter of knowledge and knowledge is to know the nature of being" -PLATO.
"The most important virtues are wisdom, courage, temperance and justice" -PLATO.

"He whose mind is fixed upon true beings has no time to look down upon the little affairs of men or to be filled with jealousy and enmity in the struggle against them; his eye is ever directed towards fixed and immutable principle, which he sees neither injuring nor injured by one another, but all in order moving according to reason; these he imitates and to these he would, as far as he can conform himself." -PLATO

"Philosophy is the highest music." -PYTHAGORAS
"No religion can remain pure if it becomes impersonal." -P. ROUBICZEK "Reason must not dominate, but serve" -P.ROUBICZEK

"Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?" -B. RUSSELL

"We must look at the abstract to understand the concrete." -B. RUSSELL "Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers...but for the sake of the questions themselves." -B. RUSSELL

"Where parties and governments are bad, as they are in most ages and countries, it makes practically no difference to a community, apart from local ravages whether its own army or the enemy’s is victorious in war…The private citizen in any event continues in such countries to pay a maximum of taxes and to suffer, in all his private interests, a maximum of vexation and neglect. Nevertheless the oppressed subject will glow like the rest with patriotic ardor, and will decry as dead to duty and honors anyone who points out how perverse is this helpless allegiance to a government representing no public interest." –G. SANTAYANA

"That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions." –G. SANTAYANA

"Wisdom: to dream with one eye open; to be detached from the world without being hostile to it; to welcome fugitive arties and pity fugitive sufferings, without forgetting for a moment how fugitive they are." –G. SANTAYANA

"There is tragedy in perfection, because the universe, because the universe in which perfection arises is itself imperfect." –G. SANTAYANA

"The goal of speculative thinking is none other than to live as much as may be in the eternal, and to absorb and be absorbed in the truth." –G. SANTAYANA

"Constant dripping wears away the stone" -RUSSIAN SAYING.

"Man is cursed to be free" -P. SARTRE

"Everyone of our acts places at stake the meaning of the world and the place of man in the universe." -JP. SARTRE

"I choose myself not in my being, but in my manner of being." -JP. SARTRE.
"Man must create for himself his own essence."-JP. SARTRE.

"All existing beings are born for no reason, continue through weakness and die by accident."-JP. SARTRE.

"Love is sympathy" -A. SCHOPENHAUER

"Truth will always be of few men." –A. SCHOPENHAUER

"Consciousness is the mere surface of our minds." -SCHOPENHAUER

"Will is the strong man who carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see." –SCHOPENHAUER

"We do not want a thing because we have found we have found reasons for it, we find reasons for it because we want it." –SCHOPENHAUER

"Nothing is more provoking when we are arguing against a man with reasons and explanations, and taking all pains to convince him, than to discover that he will not understand, that we have to deal with his will." –SCHOPENHAUER

"Memory is the menial of will" -SCHOPENHAUER

"No one is more liable to mistakes than he who acts only on reflection."

"Nature has produced the intellect for the service of the individual will. Therefore it is only designed to know things so far as they afford motives for the will, but not to fathom them or to comprehend their true being."

"The will is the only permanent and unchangeable element in the mind; it is the true will which gives unity to consciousness and holds together all its ideas and thoughts, accompanying them like a continuous harmony."

"All religions promise rewards for excellence of the will or of the heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding."

"The whole body is nothing more than objectified will."

"Everyone believes himself to be perfectly free, even in his individual actions, and thinks that at any moment he can commence another manner of life, which means that he can become another person. But through experience he finds to his astonishment not free, but subjected to necessity."

"As long as our consciousness is filled by our will, so long as we are subject to willing, we can never have lasting happiness of peace."

"The higher the organism, the higher the suffering."

"He that increases knowledge increases sorrow."

"The total picture of life is almost too painful for contemplation; life depends on our not knowing it too well."

"The life of every individual, if we survey it as a whole…and only lay stress on its most significant features, is really always a tragedy; but gone through in detail, it has the character of comedy."

"The cheerfulness and vivacity of youth are partly due to the fact that when we are ascending the hill of life, death is not visible."

"The life of our bodies is nothing but a constantly prevented dying, an ever postponed death."

"Madness comes as a way of avoiding the memory of suffering."

"Suicide, the willful destruction of the single phenomenal existence, is a vain and foolish act, for the thing-in-itself of the species, life and the will in general, remains unaffected by it, even as the rainbow endures however fast the drops which support it for the moment may chance to fall."

"Men are a thousand times more intent on becoming rich than in acquiring culture, though it is quite certain that what a man is contribute more to his happiness than what he has."

"The more we know our passions, the less they can control us and nothing will protect us from external compulsion so much as the control of ourselves."

"It is dangerous to read about a subject before we have thought about it ourselves… When we read, another person thinks for us; we merely repeat his thinking process."

"What one human being can do to another is not a very great deal; in the end everyone stands alone; and the important thing is, what it is that stands alone…"

"The happiness which we receive from ourselves is greater than that which we obtain from our surroundings… The world in which a man lives shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he looks at it… since everything which exists or happens for a man exists only in his consciousness, and happens for him alone, the most essential thing for a man is the constitution of his consciousness… therefore it is with great truth that Aristotle said ‘to be happy means to be self-sufficient.’"

"When some external cause or inward disposition lifts us suddenly out of the endless stream of willing, and delivers knowledge out of the slavery of the will, the attention is no longer directed to the motives of willing, but comprehends things free from their relation to the will, and thus observes them without personal interest, without subjectivity, purely objectively- gives itself entirely up to them, so far as they are ideas, but not in so far as they are motives."

"The fundamental condition of genius is an abnormal predominance of sensibility and irritability over reproductive power… genius is simply the most complete objectivity… genius is the power of leaving one’s interests, wishes and aims entirely out of sight, of entirely renouncing one’s own personality for a time, so as to remain pure knowing subject."

"As a rule man is sociable just in the degree in which he is intellectually poor and vulgar."

"Nature gives genius only to a few because such temperament would be a hindrance in the normal pursuits of life, which require concentration on the specific and the immediate."

"Life laughs at the death of the individual; it will survive him in his offspring, or in the offspring of others; even if his little spring of life runs dry, there are thousands of other springs that grow broader and deeper with every generation. How can man be saved? Is there a Nirvana for the race as well as for the individual? Obviously, the only final and radical conquest of the will must lie in stopping the source of life –the will to reproduce."

"Happiness dies when it is not shared."

"How long shall we be lured into this much-ado-about-nothing, this endless pain that leads only to a painful end? When shall we have the courage to fling defiance into the face of the will –to tell it that the loveliness of life is a lie and that the greatest boon of all is death!"

"Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." –H. SPENCER

"The masses think that the power and providence of God are most clearly displayed by events that are extraordinary and contrary to the conception which they have formed of nature...they suppose indeed that God is inactive so long as nature works in her accustomed order; and vice versa, that the power of nature and natural causes are idle so long as God is acting; thus they imagine two powers distinct from one another, the power of God and the power of nature." B. SPINOZA

"God is the immanent and not the extraneous cause of all things." –B. SPINOZA

"It Is a complete mistake on the part of those who say that my purpose is to show that God and nature, under which last term they understand a certain mass of corporeal matter, are one and the same. I had no such intention." –B. SPINOZA

"Whenever anything in nature seems to us ridiculous, absurd or evil, it is because we have but a partial knowledge of things, and are in the main order and coherence of nature as a whole, and because we want everything to be arranged according to the dictates of our own reason." –SPINOZA

"I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well ordered or confused." –SPINOZA

"Neither intellect or will pertains to the nature of God."- SPINOZA.

"The body cannot determine the mind to think; nor the mind determine the body to remain in motion or at rest, or in any other state, for the simple reason that the decision of the mind, and the desire and determination of the body are one and the same thing." –SPINOZA

"The mind is not an agency that deals with ideas, but it is the ideas themselves in their process and concatenation." –SPINOZA

"Neither mind nor matter is God; but the mental process and material processes which constitute the double history of the world, these and their laws and causes are God." –SPINOZA

" Every idea becomes an action, unless stopped in the transition by a different idea; the idea is itself the first stage of a unified process of which external action is the completion." –SPINOZA

"What is often called will, as the impulsive force which determines the duration of an idea in consciousness should be called desire, which is the very essence of man." –SPINOZA

"Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavors to persist in its own being; and the endeavor where with a thing seeks to persist in its own being is nothing else than the actual essence of that thing." –SPINOZA

"We do not desire things because they give us pleasure; but they give us pleasure because we desire them." –SPINOZA

"There is in the mind no absolute of free will; but the mind is determined in willing this or that by a cause which is determined in its turn by another cause and this by another, and so on to infinity." –SPINOZA

"Men think themselves free because they are conscious of their volitions and desire, are ignorant of the causes by which they are led to wish and desire." – SPINOZA

"The more a man can preserve his being and seek what is useful to him, the greater his virtue." –SPINOZA

"The formation of virtue is no other than to maintain one’s being; and man’s happiness consists of so doing." –SPINOZA

"Conceit makes men a nuisance to each other: the conceited man relates only his great deeds and only the evil ones of others." –SPINOZA

"To hate is to acknowledge our inferiority and our fear; we do not hate a foe whom we are confident we can overcome." –SPINOZA

"Minds are conquered not by arms, but by greatness of soul." –SPINOZA

"The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue." –SPINOZA

"The emotions by which we are daily assailed have reference to one certain part of the body, which is affected beyond the others, and so the emotions as a rule are in excess and detain the mind in the contemplation of one object, so that it cannot think of others." –SPINOZA

"Desire which arises from pleasure or pain which has reference to one or certain parts of the body has no advantage of man as a whole." –SPINOZA

"Passion without reason is blind, and reason without passion is dead." WD on SPINOZA.

"An emotion cannot be moved or hindered except by an opposite and stronger emotion." –SPINOZA

"A passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it, and the mind is subject to passions in proportion to the number of adequate ideas which it has." -SPINOZA

"All appetites are passions only so far as they arise from inadequate ideas; they are virtues…when generated by adequate ideas." –SPINOZA

"In so far as the mind conceives a thing according to the dictates of reason, it will be equally affected whether the idea be of anything present, past or future." –SPINOZA

"Men who are good by reason desire nothing for themselves which they do not also desire for the rest of mankind." -SPINOZA

He who sees all things as determined cannot complain, though he may complain for he perceives all things under a certain species of eternity." –SPINOZA

"If we pay attention to the common opinion or men, we shall see that they are conscious of eternity of their minds; but they confuse eternity with duration and attribute it to the imagination or memory which they believe will remain after death." -SPINOZA

"Those are far astray from a true estimate of virtue who expect for their virtue, as if it were the greatest slavery, that God will adorn them with the greatest reward; as if virtue and the serving of God were not happiness itself and the greatest liberty." –SPINOZA

"All excellent things are as difficult as they are rare." –SPINOZA

"Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state where it is decreed by common consent." –SPINOZA

"Since fear of solitude exists in all men, because no one in solitude is strong enough to defend himself and procure the necessities of life, it follows that men by nature tend to social organization." –SPINOZA

"Men are not born for citizenship, but must be made fit for it." –SPINOZA

"We pity not only a thing we have loved, but also one which we judge similar to ourselves." –SPINOZA

"Conscience is not innate, but acquired, and varies with geography." -SPINOZA

"If action could be made the ground of criminal prosecutions, and words were always allowed to pass free, sedition would be divested of every semblance of justification." -SPINOZA

"Mathematics rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty –a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting and music, yet sublimely pure and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show." -SPINOZA

"The even numbers are but half of all numbers, and yet there just as many of them as there are numbers altogether." -SPINOZA

"The greatest way to live in this world is to be what we pretend to be" -SOCRATES.
"The only thing I know is that I know nothing" -SOCRATES.
"The highest knowledge is the knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge of the wisdom and life." -SOCRATES

"The unexamined life is not worth living." -SOCRATES

"Time is the fire in which we burn." -DR. SORON

"Opportunities are multiplied as they are seized" -SUN TZU.

"Reason refuses homage to a God who can be fully understood" –M.F. TUPPER

"If you judge people, you have no time to love them." -MOTHER THERESA

"If you do not wish to commit suicide, always have something to do." -VOLTAIRE

"The world is a comedy for those who think, but it’s a tragedy for those who feel." -WALPOLE

"The meaning of a word is its meaning in language" -L. WITTGENSTEIN.
"The secret of peace is not to make our achievements equal to our desires, but to lower our desires to the level of our achievements." -ZENO

"The punishment for those who do what they do is be who they are."- ?
"It takes an enormous amount of thinking to care." -?
"Man's greatest question is whether to be pure or to be responsible." -?

"Happiness lies in achievement, rather than in possession or satiation." –

"A man’s character it’s his destiny"-?