The Riddle of Epicurus

"God either wants to eliminate bad things and can not, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can.
If he wants to and can not, than he is weak - and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, than he is spiteful - which is equally foreign to god's nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful, and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?"

- Lactantius: De Ira Deorum

Homo Hostis

"In the heyday of the European Imperialism, conquistadors and merchants bought entire islands and countries in exchange for coloured beads. In the twenty first century our personal data is probably the most valuable resource most humans still have to offer, and we are giving it to the tech giants in exchange for email services and funny cat videos."

- Yuval Noah Harari: "Homo Deus" pg. 346

Inner Peace

"Unless he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man himself will not find peace."

 - Albert Schweitzer

Respect

"The elders were wise. They knew that man's heart, away from nature, becomes hard; they knew that lack of respect for growing, living things, soon led to lack of respect for humans, too."

 - Chief Luther Standing Bear , Lakota Sioux

Credit

"Credit is the economic judgement on the morality of a man. In credit, man himself, instead of metal or paper, has become the mediator of exchange but not as a man, but as the existence of capital and interest. Human individuality, human morality, has itself become both an article of commerce and the form in which money exists. Instead of money, paper is my own personal being, my flesh and blood, my social value and status, the material body of the spirit of money."

- Karl Marx: Paris Manuscripts
as quoted by David McLellan in "Karl Marx, his life and thought" p.113