Baruch Spinoza

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

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

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.