The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the first President of the USA, George Washington, the English Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, the French writer and philosopher Voltaire, the Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Italian adventurer and author Giacomo Casanova, the English actor Peter Sellers, the Greek-American actor and film director Aristotelis ('Telly') Savalas, the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, the Scottish biologist and pharmacologist Sir Alexander Fleming, the Swiss founder of the Red Cross Henry Dunant, the English writer Alexander Pope, the US actor John Wayne, the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, the English poet and novelist Rudyard Kipling, the German poet, writer and philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the Austrian composer Franz J. Haydn, and many other figures of international renown; one thing links them all: they were Freemasons. They were members of this brotherhood, and supporters of a philosophical system that seeks to answer the question posed by all thinking men: Who am I? Why am I here? What is the purpose of life?
Freemasonry offers a way forward to all people who are genuinely seeking to find the meaning and purpose of life. It is an organization, a brotherhood, dedicated to philosophical enquiry and philanthropy. This anthology contains selected words of wisdom from internationally renowned Freemasons -poets, philosophers, writers, artists, politicians, scientists, painters, inventors, soldiers, journalists, industrialists, jurists, and entrepreneurs- from the founding of Freemasonry to the present day.