Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men.
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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.
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God is not He who is, but That which is.
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Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
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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.
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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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Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also.
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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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Maxima superbia vel abjectio est maxima sui ignorantia.
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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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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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I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.
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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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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.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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If we conceive that anyone loves, desires, or hates anything which we ourselves love, desire, or hate, we shall thereupon regard the thing in question with more steadfast love, etc. On the contrary, if we think that anyone shrinks from something that we love, we shall undergo vacillation of the soul.
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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.