Leo Tolstoy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy
"One thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions โ the truth that for our life one law is valid โ the law of love [seen in the sense of things like the laws of physics], which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainous imbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once the truth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has been smothering it." - Leo Tolstoy, A Letter to a Hindu, December of 1908 (roughly two years before his death)
"I was listening to an illiterate peasant pilgrim talking about God, about faith, about life, about salvation, and knowledge of the truth was revealed to me. I became close to the people as I listened to his views on life and faith, and more and more I came to understand the truth. The same happened to me during a reading of Chetyi-Minei and the Prologues; this became my favorite reading. Apart from miracles, which I regarded as fables to express thoughts, this reading revealed to me the meaning of life." - Leo Tolstoy, Confession, Chapter Fourteen
The Kingdom of God Is Within You
Tolstoy Wasn't What We Now Call "Religious," He Believed in the Value and Potential of the Knowledge Within Religion, Not Dogma or "Miracles": https://lemmy.world/post/44866402
Tolstoy's Personal, Social, and Divine Conceptions of Life: https://lemmy.world/post/44903802
Ludwig Wittgenstein: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/...
"Are you acquainted with Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief? At its time, this book virtually kept me alive... If you are not acquainted with it, then you cannot imagine what an effect it can have upon a person." - Ludwig Wittgenstein https://newhumanist.org.uk/...
"Tolstoy's religious writings, such as theย Gospel in Briefย andย A Confession, clearly had an enormous influence on Wittgenstein especially at the time he was writing the Tractatus. Strange then that so few commentators have even acknowledged, let alone attempted to account for, Tolstoy's influence on Wittgenstein's philosophy. It is therefore especially worth considering the extent to which theย Gospel in Briefย specifically influenced the outlook of theย Tractatus. Indeed, as his friend and correspondent, Paul Engelmann put it, out of all Tolstoy's writings Wittgenstein had an especially high regard for theย Gospel in Brief.ย Yet it often appears to be simply assumed that theย Gospel in Briefย had a profound effect on Wittgenstein. Why this might be so is never clearly explained. That the book does not seem to be readily available or very well known in the English-speaking world may partly explain why its influence on Wittgenstein may have been neglected. But in this article we attempt to explain the impact of theย Gospel in Briefย upon Wittgenstein's philosophy (especially the later passages of theย Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), and his general view of ethics." - http://www.the-philosopher.co.uk/...
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Mahatma Gandhi: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi
"Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You overwhelmed me. It left an abiding impression on me. Before the independent thinking, profound morality, and the truthfulness of this book, all the books given me by Mr. Coates seemed to pale into insignificance." - Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Part Two, Chapter Thirteen
"His logic is unassailable. And above all he endeavours to practise what he preaches. He preaches to convince. He is sincere and in earnest. He commands attention." - Mahatma Gandhi, A Letter to a Hindu
The Story of My Experiments With Truth
Martin Luther King Jr.: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/....
"Over cups of coffee in my home in Atlanta and my apartment in Chicago [located within the "ghetto"], I often talked late at night and over into the small hours of the morning with proponents of Black Power who argued passionately about the validity of violence and riots. They didn't quote Gandhi or Tolstoy." - Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., Chapter Twenty-Nine, "Black Power"
King graduated high school at fifteen, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Morehouse college at nineteen, and went on to earn his Bachelor of Divinity from Crozier Theological Seminary and a Doctorate of philosophy from Boston University. He read Plato, Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant, Aristotle, Rousseau, Hobbes, Bentham, Mill, Locke and even Marx, to "better understand the appeal of communism for many people," along with many others.
"The measured words of Leo Tolstoiโs confession in My Religion [that's a mistranslation of the American edition of the book, it's really What I Believe] _reflect an experience many have shared: โFive years ago faith came to me; I believed in the doctrine of Jesus, and my whole life underwent a sudden transformation. What I had once wished for I wished for no longer, and I began to desire what I had never desired before. What had once appeared to me right now became wrong, and the wrong of the past I beheld as rightโฆ My life and my desires were completely changed; good and evil interchanged meanings.' " - _ Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, Chapter Thirteen, "The Answer to a Perplexing Question"
