Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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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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Tota felicitas aut infelicitas in hoc solo sita est; videlicet in qualitate obiecti, cui adhaeremus amore.
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All the better; they do not force me to do anything that I would not have done of my own accord if I did not dread scandal. But since they want it that way, I enter gladly on the path that is opened to me, with the consolation that my departure will be more innocent than was the exodus of the early Hebrews from Egypt.
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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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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.
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What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.
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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 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.
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The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition.
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I pass, at length, to the third and perfectly absolute dominion, which we call democracy.
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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.
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Sed amor erga rem aeternam et infinitam sola laetitia pascit animum, ipsaque omnis tristitiae est expers; quod valde est desiderandum totisque viribus quaerendum.
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This I know, that between finite and infinite there is no comparison; so that the difference between God and the greatest and most excellent created thing is no less than the difference between God and the least created thing.
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He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.
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Superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear.
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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.
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After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.
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Sadness diminishes a man's powers.
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All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of menб that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men's thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden... He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it.
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The idea, which constitutes the actual being of the human mind, is not simple, but compounded of a great number of ideas.
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The things which ... 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.
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Meum institutum non est verborum significationem sed rerum naturam explicare
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To understand something is to be delivered of it.
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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.