Have the courage to use your own understanding!

Treat humanity, in your own person or in another, always as an end and never merely as a means.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.

The wise man is free from passions, not because he does not feel, but because his judgments are correct.

-- Chrysippus of Soli

The pleasant life is produced not by endless drinking and revelry but by sober reasoning.

-- Epicurus

Human nature is evil; its goodness is the result of deliberate effort.

-- Xunzi

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

-- Benedictus de Spinoza

Good sense is the most evenly distributed thing in the world.

-- René Descartes

Compassion is the foundation of morality.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer