Baruch Spinoza

His "Ethics" is my favorite book and the one I'd take with me on a deserted island.  It has had a profound impact on my views of religion.

“Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.”

“I would warn you that 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.”

   “So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long as he is determined  not to do it; and consequently so long as it is impossible to him that he should do it”

Arthur Schopenhauer

This guy pulled no punches and he was a good read to counter the fluffy world views of those around me in Eugene, Or.  He lived in a time when everyone said freedom was coming... only to see great brutality arise.  He is often labeled as pessimistic, but I think him realist.

“After your death you will be what you were before your birth.”

“We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people”

“Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident”

“The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him”

Aristotle

No surprise that one the greatest influences on Western science and religion should also be one of mine.  I think that two things that got me most when I first encountered him was the defining of things, and the middle way.

“You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.”

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

“He who hath many friends hath none.”

“Anyone can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person at the right time, and for the right purpose and in the right way - that is not within everyone's power and that is not easy.”

“Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.”

Voltaire

How can anyone not like Voltaire?  How can anyone not laugh out loud when reading "Candide"?  Challenge the system, use your reason!  Branded an Atheist by the Church, Voltaire was, in my opinion, closer to God than those in the Church.

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers”

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”

“God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best”

 “The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.”

“If Christians want us to believe in a Redeemer, let them act redeemed”

“Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.”