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He who, while unacquainted with these writings, nevertheless knows by the natural light that there is a God having the attributes we have recounted, and who also pursues a true way of life, is altogether blessed. -- Baruch Spinoza
No one doubts but that we imagine time from the very fact that we imagine other bodies to be moved slower or faster or equally fast. We are accustomed to determine duration by the aid of some measure of motion. -- Baruch Spinoza
Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love. Hatred which is completely vanquished by love, passes into love; and love is thereupon greater, than id hatred had not preceded it. -- Baruch Spinoza
Hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love: and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it ... -- Baruch Spinoza
Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws. -- Baruch Spinoza
Simply from the fact that we have regarded a thing with the emotion of pleasure or pain, though that thing be not the efficient cause of the emotion, we can either love or hate it. -- Baruch Spinoza
If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past. -- Baruch Spinoza
I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them. -- Baruch Spinoza
We feel and know that we are eternal. -- Baruch Spinoza
Nature has no goal in view, and final causes are only human imaginings. -- Baruch Spinoza
Except God no substance can be granted or conceived.. Everything, I say, is in God, and all things which are made, are made by the laws of the infinite nature of God, and necessarily follows from the necessity of his essence. -- Baruch Spinoza
If a man had begun to hate an object of his love, so that love is thoroughly destroyed, he will, causes being equal, regard it with more hatred than if he had never loved it, and his hatred will be in proportion to the strength of his former love. -- Baruch Spinoza
The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure ... you are above everything distressing. -- Baruch Spinoza
If anyone conceives that he is loved by another, and believes that he has given no cause for such love, he will love that other in return. -- Baruch Spinoza
Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others. -- Baruch Spinoza
Men, in so far as they live in obedience to reason necessarily do only such things as are necessarily good for human nature, and consequently for each individual man. -- Baruch Spinoza
He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfully -- Baruch Spinoza
Ceremonies are no aid to blessedness. -- Baruch Spinoza
A man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present. -- Baruch Spinoza
Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many. -- Baruch Spinoza
Yet nature cannot be contravened, but preserves a fixed and immutable order. -- Baruch Spinoza
Only free men are thoroughly grateful one to another. -- Baruch Spinoza
All laws which can be broken without any injury to another, are counted but a laughing-stock, and are so far from bridling the desires and lusts of men, that on the contrary they stimulate
them. -- Baruch Spinoza
In proportion as we endeavor to live according to the guidance of reason, shall we strive as much as possible to depend less on hope, to liberate ourselves from fear, to rule fortune, and to direct our actions by the sure counsels of reason. -- Baruch Spinoza
We must take care not to admit as true anything, which is only probable. For when one falsity has been let in, infinite others follow. -- Baruch Spinoza
Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's; but under nature everything belongs to all. -- Baruch Spinoza
I can control my passions and emotions if I can understand their nature -- Baruch Spinoza
Everything in nature is a cause from which there flows some effect. -- Baruch Spinoza
Freedom is self-determination. -- Baruch Spinoza
Finally, it follows from the preceding proposition that the joy by which the drunkard is enslaved is altogether different from the joy which is the portion of the philosopher,
a think I wished just to hint in passing. -- Baruch Spinoza
In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity. -- Baruch Spinoza
Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare. -- Baruch Spinoza
What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness. -- Baruch Spinoza
No reason compels me to maintain that the body does not die unless it is changed into a corpse. And, indeed, experience seems to urge a different conclusion. Sometimes a man undergoes such changes that I should hardly have said he was the same man. -- Baruch Spinoza
Things are not more or less perfect, according as they delight or offend human senses, or according as they are serviceable or repugnant to mankind. -- Baruch Spinoza
Emotion, which is called a passivity of the soul, is a confused idea, whereby the mind affirms concerning its body, or any part thereof, a force for existence (existendi vis) greater or less than before, and by the presence of which the mind is determined to think of one thing rather than another. -- Baruch Spinoza
Faith is nothing but obedience and piety. -- Baruch Spinoza
Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage : for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune : so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse. -- Baruch Spinoza
The intellectual love of a thing consists in understanding its perfections. -- Baruch Spinoza
Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character. -- Baruch Spinoza
These are the prejudices which I undertook to notice here. If any others of a similar character remain, they can easily be rectified with a little thought by anyone. -- Baruch Spinoza
A free man, who lives among ignorant people, tries as much as he can to refuse their benefits.. He who lives under the guidance of reason endeavours as much as possible to repay his fellow's hatred, rage, contempt, etc. with love and nobleness. -- Baruch Spinoza
Whether this desire for sex is moderate or not, it is usually called lust. -- Baruch Spinoza
Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens. -- Baruch Spinoza
He that can carp in the most eloquent or acute manner at the weakness of the human mind is held by his fellows as almost divine. -- Baruch Spinoza
He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity. -- Baruch Spinoza
He who hates anyone will endeavor to do him an injury, unless he fears that a greater injury will thereby accrue to himself; on the other hand, he who loves anyone will, by the same law, seek to benefit him. -- Baruch Spinoza
The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed along with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal. -- Baruch Spinoza
By emotion I mean the modifications of the body, whereby the active power of the said body is increased or diminished, aided or constrained, and also the ideas of such modifications. -- Baruch Spinoza
Everyone is by absolute natural right the master of his own thoughts, and thus utter failure will attend any attempt in a commonwealth to force men to speak only as prescribed by the sovereign despite their different and opposing opinions. -- Baruch Spinoza
The real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment which they are unable to tyrannize over. -- Baruch Spinoza
I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them. -- Baruch Spinoza
Anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic. -- Baruch Spinoza
The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition. -- Baruch Spinoza
What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter -- Baruch Spinoza
Nothing in Nature is random. A thing appears random only through the incompleteness of our knowledge. -- Baruch Spinoza
God is the efficient cause not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence.
Corr. Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner. -- Baruch Spinoza
Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men. -- Baruch Spinoza
Laws directed against opinions affect the generous-minded rather than the wicked, and are adapted less for coercing criminals than for irritating the upright. -- Baruch Spinoza
Whatsoever is, is in God. -- Baruch Spinoza
Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more easily than their words. -- Baruch Spinoza
A free man thinks of death least of all things, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life. -- Baruch Spinoza
Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts. -- Baruch Spinoza
The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts. -- Baruch Spinoza
He who has a true idea simultaneously knows that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt of the truth of the thing perceived. -- Baruch Spinoza
Love is nothing but Joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause (Ethics, part III, proposition 13, scholium). -- Baruch Spinoza
Men will find that they can ... avoid far more easily the perils which beset them on all sides by united action. -- Baruch Spinoza
Every person should embrace those [dogmas] that he, being the best judge of himself, feels will do most to strengthen in him love of justice. -- Baruch Spinoza
I believe that a triangle, if it could speak, would say that God is eminently triangular, and a circle that the divine nature is eminently circular; and thus would every one ascribe his own attributes to God. -- Baruch Spinoza
I have resolved to demonstrate by a certain and undoubted course of argument, or to deduce from the very condition of human nature, not what is new and unheard of, but only such things as
agree best with practice. -- Baruch Spinoza
Let unswerving integrity be your watchword. -- Baruch Spinoza
He who lives according to the guidance of reason strives as much as possible to repay the hatred, anger, or contempt of others towards himself with love or generosity ... hatred is increased by reciprocal hatred, and, on the other hand, can be extinguished by love, so that hatred passes into love. -- Baruch Spinoza
Falsity consists in the privation of knowledge, which inadequate, fragmentary, or confused ideas involve. -- Baruch Spinoza
If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil. -- Baruch Spinoza
God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things. -- Baruch Spinoza
The mind has greater power over the emotions, and is less subject thereto, insofar as it understands all things to be necessary. -- Baruch Spinoza
Everyone has as much right as he has might. -- Baruch Spinoza
I saw that all the things I feared and which feared me had nothing good or bad in them save in so far as the mind was affected by them. -- Baruch Spinoza
Such things as are good simply because they have been commanded or instituted, or as being symbols of something good, are mere shadows which cannot be reckoned among actions that are the offspring, as it were, or fruit of a sound mind and of intellect. -- Baruch Spinoza
The multitude always strains after rarities and exceptions, and thinks little of the gifts of nature; so that, when prophecy is talked of, ordinary knowledge is not supposed to be included. Nevertheless it has as much right as any other to be called Divine. -- Baruch Spinoza
I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused. -- Baruch Spinoza
The greater emotion with which we conceive a loved object to be affected toward us, the greater will be our complacency. -- Baruch Spinoza
Man can, indeed, act contrarily to the decrees of God, as far as they have been written like laws in the minds of ourselves or the prophets, but against that eternal decree of God, which is written in universal nature, and has regard to the course of nature as a whole, he can do nothing. -- Baruch Spinoza
Nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition -- Baruch Spinoza
It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to another. -- Baruch Spinoza
I shall treat the nature and power of the Affects, and the power of the Mind over them, by the same Method by which, in the preceding parts, I treated God and the Mind, and I shall consider human actions and appetites just as if it were a Question of lines, planes, and bodies. -- Baruch Spinoza
Laws which can be broken without any wrong to one's neighbor are a laughing-stock; and such laws, instead of restraining the appetites and lusts of mankind, serve rather to heighten them. Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata [we always resist prohibitions, and yearn for what is denied us]. -- Baruch Spinoza
In the mind there is no absolute or free will. -- Baruch Spinoza
True knowledge of good and evil as we possess is merely abstract or general, and the judgment which we pass on the order of things and the connection of causes, with a view to determining what is good or bad for us in the present, is rather imaginary than real. -- Baruch Spinoza
Statesman are suspected of plotting against mankind, rather than consulting their interests, and are esteemed more crafty than learned. -- Baruch Spinoza
Of all the things that are beyond my power, I value nothing more highly than to be allowed the honor of entering into bonds of friendship with people who sincerely love truth. For, of things beyond our power, I believe there is nothing in the world which we can love with tranquility except such men. -- Baruch Spinoza
In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth. -- Baruch Spinoza
To understand something is to be delivered of it. -- Baruch Spinoza
Everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find. -- Baruch Spinoza
There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope. -- Baruch Spinoza
Everyone endeavors as much as possible to make others love what he loves, and to hate what he hates ... This effort to make everyone approve what we love or hate is in truth ambition, and so we see that each person by nature desires that other persons should live according to his way of thinking ... -- Baruch Spinoza
The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation. -- Baruch Spinoza
We can always get along better by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and remorse ... we should strive to keep worry from our life. -- Baruch Spinoza
The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free. -- Baruch Spinoza
As though God had turned away from the wise, and written his decrees, not in the mind of man but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the inspiration and instinct of
fools, madmen, and birds. Such is the unreason to which terror can drive mankind! -- Baruch Spinoza
God is a thing that thinks. -- Baruch Spinoza
He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them. -- Baruch Spinoza
The holy word of God is on everyone's lips ... but ... we see almost everyone presenting their own versions of God's word, with the sole purpose of using religion as a pretext for making others think as they do. -- Baruch Spinoza
He who loves God cannot endeavor that God should love him in return. -- Baruch Spinoza
True piety for the universe but no time for religions made for man's convenience. -- Baruch Spinoza
To comprehend an idea, a person must simultaneously accept it as true. Conscious analysis - which, depending on the idea, may occur almost immediately or with considerable effort - allows the mind to reject what it intially accepted as fact. -- Baruch Spinoza
We strive to further the occurrence of whatever we imagine will lead to Joy, and to avert or destroy what we imagine is contrary to it, or will lead to Sadness. -- Baruch Spinoza
Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are determined. -- Baruch Spinoza
Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself. -- Baruch Spinoza
I do not believe anyone has reached such perfection, surpassing all others, except Christ, to whom God immediately revealed - without words or visions - the conditions which lead to
salvation. -- Baruch Spinoza
True virtue is life under the direction of reason. -- Baruch Spinoza
All the objects pursued by the multitude not only bring no remedy that tends to preserve our being, but even act as hinderances, causing the death not seldom of those who possess them, and always of those who are possessed by them. -- Baruch Spinoza
The order and connection of ideas in the same as the order and connection of things -- Baruch Spinoza
Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself; nor do we delight in happiness because we restrain from our lusts; but on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore we are able to restrain them. -- Baruch Spinoza
Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious. -- Baruch Spinoza
God and all attributes of God are eternal. -- Baruch Spinoza
Love or hatred towards a thing, which we conceive to be free, must, other things being similar, be greater than if it were felt towards a thing acting by necessity. -- Baruch Spinoza
Big fish eat small fish with as much right as they have power. -- Baruch Spinoza
Happiness is a virtue, not its reward. -- Baruch Spinoza
When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master. -- Baruch Spinoza
He whose honor depends on the opinion of the mob must day by day strive with the greatest anxiety, act and scheme in order to retain his reputation. For the mob is varied and inconsistent, and therefore if a reputation is not carefully preserved it dies quickly. -- Baruch Spinoza
All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare. -- Baruch Spinoza
The body is affected by the image of the thing, in the same way as if the thing were actually present. -- Baruch Spinoza
Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. -- Baruch Spinoza
To know the order of nature, and regard the universe as orderly is the highest function of the mind. -- Baruch Spinoza
There is no fear without some hope, and no hope without some fear. -- Baruch Spinoza
Whatever increases, decreases, limits or extends the body's power of action, increases decreases, limits, or extends the mind's power of action. And whatever increases, decreases, limits, or extends the mind's power of action, also increases, decreases, limits, or extends the body's power of action. -- Baruch Spinoza
Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause, and hatred pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause. -- Baruch Spinoza
As men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another to scoff, I conclude that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits. -- Baruch Spinoza
Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice. -- Baruch Spinoza
Will and intellect are one and the same thing. -- Baruch Spinoza
None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not. -- Baruch Spinoza
The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain by fear, nor to exact obedience, but to free every man from fear that he may live in all possible security ... In fact the true aim of government is liberty. -- Baruch Spinoza
It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance. -- Baruch Spinoza
Pride is over-estimation of oneself by reason of self-love. -- Baruch Spinoza
Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things. -- Baruch Spinoza
It is not possible that we should remember that we existed before our body, for our can bear no trace of such existence, neither can eternity be defined in terms of time or have any relation to time. But notwithstanding, we feel and know that we are eternal. -- Baruch Spinoza
Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd. -- Baruch Spinoza
The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue. -- Baruch Spinoza
Philosophers conceive of the passions which harass us as vices into which men fall by their own fault, and, therefore, generally deride, bewail, or blame them, or execrate them, if they
wish to seem unusually pious. -- Baruch Spinoza
I call him free who is led solely by reason. -- Baruch Spinoza
To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole. -- Baruch Spinoza
Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety. -- Baruch Spinoza
The good which every man, who follows after virtue, desires for himself he will also desire for other men ... -- Baruch Spinoza
One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf. -- Baruch Spinoza
We feel and experience ourselves to be eternal. -- Baruch Spinoza
A miracle signifies nothing more than an event ... the cause of which cannot be explained by another familiar instance, or ... which the narrator is unable to explain. -- Baruch Spinoza
Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature. -- Baruch Spinoza
Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained. -- Baruch Spinoza
Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself. -- Baruch Spinoza
The virtue of a free man appears equally great in refusing to face difficulties as in overcoming them. -- Baruch Spinoza
By that which is self-caused, I mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of which the nature is only conceivable as existent. -- Baruch Spinoza
Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion. -- Baruch Spinoza
If Scripture were to describe the downfall of an empire in the style adopted by political historians, the common people would not be stirred. -- Baruch Spinoza
When we love a thing similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring about that it should love us in return. -- Baruch Spinoza
Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words. -- Baruch Spinoza
There can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope. -- Baruch Spinoza
The mind of God is all the mentality that is scattered over space and time, the diffused consciousness that animates the world. -- Baruch Spinoza
He who would distinguish the true from the false must have an adequate idea of what is true and false. -- Baruch Spinoza
He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason. -- Baruch Spinoza
Minds are not conquered by force, but by love and high-mindedness. -- Baruch Spinoza
That by the decrees and volitions, and consequently the providence of God, Scripture (as I will prove by Scriptural examples) means nothing but Nature's order following necessarily from her eternal laws. -- Baruch Spinoza
All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love. -- Baruch Spinoza
If anyone conceives, that an object of his love joins itself to another with closer bonds of friendship than he himself has attained to, he will be affected with hatred towards the loved object and with envy towards his rival. -- Baruch Spinoza
In regard to intellect and true virtue, every nation is on a par with the rest, and God has not in these respects chosen one people rather than another. -- Baruch Spinoza
If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune. -- Baruch Spinoza
Ambition is the immoderate desire for power. -- Baruch Spinoza
Laws which prescribe what everyone must believe, and forbid men to say or write anything against this or that opinion, are often passed to gratify, or rather to appease the anger of those who cannot abide independent minds. -- Baruch Spinoza
By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in -- Baruch Spinoza
God is not He who is, but That which is. -- Baruch Spinoza
He who has a true idea, knows at that same time that he has a true idea, nor can he doubt concerning the truth of the thing. -- Baruch Spinoza
The idea, which constitutes the actual being of the human mind, is not simple, but compounded of a great number of ideas. -- Baruch Spinoza
Men are especially intolerant of serving and being ruled by, their equals. -- Baruch Spinoza
Speculation, like nature, abhors a vacuum. -- Baruch Spinoza
Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility. -- Baruch Spinoza
Love is nothing but joy accompanied with the idea of an eternal cause. -- Baruch Spinoza
Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow. -- Baruch Spinoza
Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad. -- Baruch Spinoza
For though men be ignorant, yet they are men -- Baruch Spinoza
Scriptural doctrine contains not abstruse speculation or philosophic reasoning, but very simple matters able to be understood by the most sluggish mind. -- Baruch Spinoza
So they will pursue their questions from cause to cause, till at last you take refuge in the will of God - in other words, the sanctuary of ignorance. -- Baruch Spinoza
The purpose of the state is really freedom. -- Baruch Spinoza
Self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue. -- Baruch Spinoza
The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is. -- Baruch Spinoza
Measure, time and number are nothing but modes of thought or rather of imagination. -- Baruch Spinoza
Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear. -- Baruch Spinoza
A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life. -- Baruch Spinoza
The less the mind understands and the more things it perceives, the greater its power of feigning is; and the more things it understands, the more that power is diminished. -- Baruch Spinoza
Schisms do not originate in a love of truth, which is a source of courtesy and gentleness, but rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy. -- Baruch Spinoza
It is sure that those are most desirous of honour or glory who cry out loudest of its abuse and the vanity of the world. -- Baruch Spinoza
According as each has been educated, so he repents of or glories in his actions. -- Baruch Spinoza
The more intelligible a thing is, the more easily it is retained in the memory, and counterwise, the less intelligible it is, the more easily we forget it. -- Baruch Spinoza
Indulge yourself in pleasures only in so far as they are necessary for the preservation of health. -- Baruch Spinoza
The proper study of a wise man is not how to die but how to live. -- Baruch Spinoza
I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy, I know that I understand the true philosophy. -- Baruch Spinoza
It is certain that seditions, wars, and contempt or breach of the laws are not so much to be imputed to the wickedness of the subjects, as to the bad state of the dominion. -- Baruch Spinoza
Reason is no match for passion. -- Baruch Spinoza
Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also. -- Baruch Spinoza
The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self. -- Baruch Spinoza
The things ... are esteemed as the greatest good of all ... can be reduced to these three headings: to wit, Riches, Fame, and Pleasure. With these three the mind is so engrossed that it cannot scarcely think of any other good. -- Baruch Spinoza
No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand. -- Baruch Spinoza
The mind can only imagine anything, or remember what is past, while the body endures. -- Baruch Spinoza
The object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body -- Baruch Spinoza
Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone. -- Baruch Spinoza
Nothing in nature is by chance ... Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge. -- Baruch Spinoza
No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides. -- Baruch Spinoza
The greatest good is the knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole nature. -- Baruch Spinoza
Do not weep. Do not wax indignant. Understand. -- Baruch Spinoza
We are a part of nature as a whole, whose order we follow. -- Baruch Spinoza
Don't cry and don't rage. Understand. -- Baruch Spinoza
Desire is the very essence of man. -- Baruch Spinoza
Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause. -- Baruch Spinoza
Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from citizens. -- Baruch Spinoza
[Believers] are but triflers who, when they cannot explain a thing, run back to the will of God; this is, truly, a ridiculous way of expressing ignorance. -- Baruch Spinoza
I make this chief distinction between religion and superstition, that the latter is founded on ignorance, the former on knowledge. -- Baruch Spinoza
We are so constituted by Nature that we easily believe the things we hope for, but believe only with difficulty those we fear, and that we regard such things more or less highly than is just. This is the source of the superstitions by which men everywhere are troubled. For the rest, I don -- Baruch Spinoza
All is One (Nature, God) -- Baruch Spinoza
I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace. -- Baruch Spinoza
In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible ; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another. -- Baruch Spinoza
Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them. -- Baruch Spinoza
It is usually the case with most men that their nature is so constituted that they pity those who fare badly and envy those who fare well. -- Baruch Spinoza
I have tried sedulously not to laugh at the acts of man, nor to lament them, nor to detest them, but to understand them. -- Baruch Spinoza
The eternal wisdom of God ... has shown itself forth in all things, but chiefly in the mind of man, and most of all in Jesus Christ. -- Baruch Spinoza
If facts conflict with a theory, either the theory must be changed or the facts. -- Baruch Spinoza
Those, who are believed to be most self - abased and humble, are generally in reality the most ambitious and envious -- Baruch Spinoza
Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived. -- Baruch Spinoza
A good thing which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil. -- Baruch Spinoza
Reality and perfection are synonymous. -- Baruch Spinoza
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice. -- Baruch Spinoza
Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined. -- Baruch Spinoza
So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long as he is determined not to do it; and consequently so long as it is impossible to him that he should do it. -- Baruch Spinoza
Desire is the essence of a man. -- Baruch Spinoza
The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak. -- Baruch Spinoza
Men who are ruled by reason desire nothing for themselves which they would not wish for all mankind. -- Baruch Spinoza
The more we understand individual things, the more we understand God. -- Baruch Spinoza