So, as I said, Kalamas: 'Don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, This contemplative is our teacher. When you know for yourselves that, ;These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted and carried out, lead to welfare and to happiness — then you should enter and remain in them.' Thus was it said. And in reference to this was it said.
--Lord Buddha
Kalama Sutta, AN 3.65

"Monks, as low-down thieves might carve you limb from limb with a double-handled saw, yet even then whoever sets his mind at enmity, he, for this reason, is not a doer of my teaching. Herein, monks you should rain yourselves thus: 'Neither will our minds become perverted, nor will we utter an evil speech, but kindly and compassionate will we dwell, with a mind of friendliness, void of hatred; we will dwell having suffused the whole world with a mind of friendliness that is far-reaching, widespread, without enmity, without malevolence.' This is how you must train yourselves, monks."
--Lord Buddha
Majjhima Nikaya, Kakacupama Stta, I Discourse on the Parable of the Saw.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
--Bertrand Russell

Although you may spend your life killing, You will not exhaust all your foes. But if you quell your own anger, your real enemy will be slain.
--Nagarjuna

And if I can take part in it by transforming my own consciousness, then someone else's, I'm happy to do it.
--Bill Hicks

The real Buddhism is not books, not manuals, not word for word repetition from the Tipitaka, nor is it rites and rituals. These are not the real Buddhism. The real Buddhism is the practice, by way of body, speech and mind that will destroy the defilements, in part or completely. One need not have anything to do with books or manuals. One ought not to rely on rites and rituals, or anything else external, including spirits and celestial beings. Rather one must be directly concerned with bodily action, speech and thought. That is, one must persevere in one's efforts to control and eliminate the defilements so that clear insight can arise. One will then be automatically capable of acting appropriately, and will be free of suffering from that moment right up to the end.
--Buddhadasa Bikkhu

If the Creator were conscious of Himself, He would not need conscious creatures; nor is it probable that the extremely indirect methods of creation, which squander millions of years upon the development of countless species and creatures, are the outcome of purposeful intention. Natural history tells us of a haphazard and casual transformation of species over hundreds of millions of years of devouring and being devoured. The biological and political history of man is an elaborate repetition of the same thing. But the history of the mind offers a different picture. Here the miracle of reflecting consciousness intervenes -- the second cosmogony. The importance of consciousness is so great that one cannot help suspecting the element of meaning to be concealed somewhere within all the monstrous, apparently senseless biological turmoil, and that the road to its manifestation was ultimately found on the level of warm-blooded vertebrates possessed of a differentiated brain -- found as if by chance, unintended and unforeseen, and yet somehow sensed, felt and groped for out of some dark urge.
--C.G. Jung

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
--Jean Jacques Rousseau

Religious people have no monopoly on dogmatism, and they are not solely responsible for the many divisions of our world into separate moral and ideological communities. The root of human suffering is not religion; it is mental afflictions such as hatred, attachment, and delusion.
--B. Alan Wallace

In the end, you are exactly--what you are.
Put on a wig with a million curls,
put the highest heeled boots on your feet,
yet you remain in the end just what you are.
--Mephistopheles