Ben

“Since love of God is the highest felicity and happiness of man, his final end and the aim of all his actions, it follows that he alone observes the divine law who is concerned to love God not from fear of punishment nor love of something else, such as pleasure, fame, ect., but from the single fact that he knows God, or that he knows that the knowledge and love of God is the highest good”
― Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise

“I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait.”
― Walt Whitman

“When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti

“The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:

1- Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2- Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3- Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4- When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5- Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6- Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7- Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8- Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9- Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10- Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.”
― Russell Bertrand