Fear breeds superstition. - Benedictus de Spinoza

[The journey to Hades] I, too, have been in the underworld, like Odysseus, and shall be there often yet, and not only rams have I sacrificed to be able to speak with a few of the dead, but I have not spared my own blood. Four pairs it was that did not deny themselves to my sacrifice: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer. With these I must come to terms when I have long wandered alone; they may call me right and wrong; to them will I listen when in the process they call each other right and wrong.

In a state of nature nothing can be said to be just or unjust; this is so only in a civil state, where it is decided by common agreement what belongs to this or that man.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.