Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune.
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Reality and perfection are synonymous.
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Pride is over-estimation of oneself by reason of self-love.
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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.
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Let unswerving integrity be your watchword.
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Men will find that they can ... avoid far more easily the perils which beset them on all sides by united action.
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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.
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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.
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What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness.
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According as each has been educated, so he repents of or glories in his actions.
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Men who are ruled by reason desire nothing for themselves which they would not wish for all mankind.
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To understand something is to be delivered of it.
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Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favours, they are consequently for the most part, very prone to credulity.
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Ceremonies are no aid to blessedness.
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Freedom is self-determination.
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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.
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The proper study of a wise man is not how to die but how to live.
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Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak.
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No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.
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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.
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If we love something similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring it about that it should love us in return.
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The more we understand individual things, the more we understand God.
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Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.
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The greatest secret of monarchic rule...is to keep men deceived and to cloak in the specious name of religion the fear by which they must be checked, so that they will fight for slavery as they would for salvation, and will think it not shameful, but a most honorable achievement, to give their life and blood that one man may have a ground for boasting.