In proportion as we endeavor to live according to the guidance of reason, shall we strive as much as possible to depend less on hope, to liberate our… - Benedictus de Spinoza

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

Truly, all the lively, the lively men from the school of Kant, became Neospinozists! In other words, they became Spinozists. The Kantians became Spinozists—what happened? Why did the most prominent Kantians—Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, the best philosophical brains Germany has ever produced—become Spinozists? One will try in vain to find an answer to this question in our histories of philosophy, which do not even ask that legitimate and obvious question. And there is no other answer to it than this one: that it could not have been otherwise, since these truly philosophical men necessarily saw and felt how different Benedict Spinoza's stance within philosophy was from that of Kant, who—to say it in my blunt way—had nothing in common with philosophy.

The philosopher Spinoza likened our existence to that of a cell in the bloodstream: the lone cell would be unaware of the fact that it is merely a part of a greater whole.