Giordano Bruno

The Divine Light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it.

Desire urges me on, while fear bridals me.

If the butterfly wings its way to the sweet light that attracts it, it's only becasue it doesn't know that the fire can consume it.

They dispute not in order to find or even to seek Truth, but for victory, and to appear the more learned and strenuous upholders of a contrary opinion. Such persons should be avoided by all who have not a good breastplate of patience.

It is immoral to hold an opinion in order to curry another's favor; mercenary, servile, and against the dignity of human liberty to yield and submit; supremely stupid to believe as a matter of habit; irrational to decide according to the majority opinion, as if the number of sages exceeded the infinite number of fools.

Maybe you who condemn me are in greater fear than I who am condemned.

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.

See how fortune deludes us, and that which we put carefully into her hands, she either breaks or lets it fall from her hands, or causes it to be removed by the violence of another, or suffocates and poisons, or taints with suspicion, fear and jealousy to the great hurt and ruin of the possessor.

It may be you fear more to deliver judgment upon me than I fear judgment.

Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.

It is proper that noble spirits, equipped with truth and enlightened with the Divine intelligence, should arm themselves against dense ignorance by climbing up to the high rock and tower of contemplation.

Innumerable spirits and souls, when spread out through the same space, do not interfere with each other such that the diffusion of one would affect the diffusion of an infinity of others.

With luck on your side you can do without brains.

There is one basic cause of all effects.

Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.

I await your sentence with less fear than you pass it. The time will come when all will see what I see.