Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also.
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True virtue is life under the direction of reason.
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Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.
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Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.
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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.
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Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.
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Maxima superbia vel abjectio est maxima sui ignorantia.
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I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
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[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.
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Tota felicitas aut infelicitas in hoc solo sita est; videlicet in qualitate obiecti, cui adhaeremus amore.
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The ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed under the three heads - Riches, Fame, and the Pleasures of Sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little power to reflect on any different good.
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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.
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Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.
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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.
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In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity.
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I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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Further conceive, I beg, that a stone, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavoring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such a stone, being conscious merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.
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God is not He who is, but That which is.
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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.
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We can conceive of various kinds of democracy. But my intention is not to treat of every kind, but of that only, 'wherein all, without exception, who owe allegiance to the laws of the country only, and are further independent and of respectable life, have the right of voting in the supreme council and of filling the offices of the dominion.'
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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.