Hence it comes that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed
— Niccolo Machiavelli
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo
— Karl Marx
Each injustice has to be fought against, even if it's only in one's heart
— Pramoedya Ananta Toer
If there is a God, He will have to beg my forgiveness
— Carved on the walls of a concentration camp cell during WWII by a Jewish prisoner
The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved
— Mother Theresa
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal
— Albert Pike
If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives
— Robert South
That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence
— Christopher Hitchens
A truly great man never puts away the simplicity of a child
— Chinese Proverb
There is but one morality, as there is but one geometry
— Voltaire
There will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers
— Plato
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful
— Samuel Johnson
They know enough who know how to learn
— Henry Adams
Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience
— Albert Einstein
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence