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I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.
--
Albert Einstein, in response the telegrammed question of New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein in (24 April 1929); he later expanded on his comments about Spinoza's and his own ideas on religion elsewhere : "I can understand your aversion to the use of the term "religion" to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza... I have not found a better expression than "religious" for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason." — as quoted in Einstein : Science and Religion by Arnold V. Lesikar

 

Baruch Spinoza

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We followers of Spinoza see our God in the wonderful order and lawfulness of all that exists and in its soul ("Beseeltheit") as it reveals itself in man and animal. It is a different question whether belief in a personal God should be contested. Freud endorsed this view in his latest publication. I myself would never engage in such a task. For such a belief seems to me preferable to the lack of any transcendental outlook of life, and I wonder whether one can ever successfully render to the majority of mankind a more sublime means in order to satisfy its metaphysical needs.

 

Albert Einstein

 

If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism.

 

Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind? Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government.

 

John Quincy Adams

 

What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed...

 

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

 

The ideal of non-attachment has been preached again and again in the course of the last 3000 years. It is found in Hinduism, the teachings of Buddha, the doctrine of Lao Tsu, in the philosophy of the Greek Stoics. The Gospel of Jesus is essentially one of non-attachment to the things of this world, and of attachment to God. What the Jewish philosopher Spinoza calls "blessedness" is simply the state of non-attachment, just as Spinoza's "human bondage" is the condition of one who identifies himself with his own desires, emotions, and thought processes, or with their objects in the external world.

 

Patrick (Australian novelist) White