Tao Te Ching

“In all history, nothing is so surprising or so difficult to account for as the sudden rise of civilization in Greece. What they achieved in art and literature is familiar to everybody, but what they did in the purely intellectual realm is even more exceptional… Deductive reasoning from general premises was a Greek innovation… they speculated freely about the nature of the world and the ends of life, without being bound in the fetter of any inherited orthodoxy. What occurred was so astonishing that—until very recent time—men were content to gape and talk mystically about the Greek genius.”

— Bertrand Russell 1872 – 1970 CE
“20th century Voltaire”
from History of Western Philosophy