“Can any one doubt that if the noblest saint among the Buddhists, the best Mahometan, the highest Stoic of Athens, the purest and wisest Christian, — Buddha and Menu in India, Confucius in China, Spinoza in Holland, could somewhere meet and converse, — they would all find themselves of one religion, — would find themselves denounced by their own sects, and sustained by these believed adversaries of their sects.”

—  Baruch Spinoza

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his lecture entitled “Essential Principles of Religion,”
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Dutch philosopher 1632–1677

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