Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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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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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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I pass, at length, to the third and perfectly absolute dominion, which we call democracy.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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God and all attributes of God are eternal.
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No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.
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Men are especially intolerant of serving and being ruled by, their equals.
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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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Big fish eat small fish with as much right as they have power.
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Measure, time and number are nothing but modes of thought or rather of imagination.
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I saw that all things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save insofar as the mind was affected by them.
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In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another. For no one by the law of nature is bound to please another, unless he chooses, nor to hold anything to be good or evil, but what he himself, according to his own temperament, pronounces to be so; and, to speak generally, nothing is forbidden by the law of nature, except what is beyond everyone's power.
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Let unswerving integrity be your watchword.
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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.
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Everything in nature is a cause from which there flows some effect.
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What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness.
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Pride is over-estimation of oneself by reason of self-love.
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In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.
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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.
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To understand something is to be delivered of it.
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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.