Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage : for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune : so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.
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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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No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.
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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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Indulge yourself in pleasures only in so far as they are necessary for the preservation of health.
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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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Big fish eat small fish with as much right as they have power.
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According as each has been educated, so he repents of or glories in his actions.
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In regard to intellect and true virtue, every nation is on a par with the rest, and God has not in these respects chosen one people rather than another.
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Freedom is self-determination.
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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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I should attempt to treat human vice and folly geometrically... the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from the necessity and efficacy of nature... I shall, therefore, treat the nature and strength of the emotion in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids.
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The mind can only imagine anything, or remember what is past, while the body endures.
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The safest way for a state is to lay down the rule that religion is comprised solely in the exercise of charity and justice, and that the rights of rulers in sacred, no less than in secular matters, should merely have to do with actions, but that every man should think what he likes and say what he thinks.
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To comprehend an idea, a person must simultaneously accept it as true. Conscious analysis - which, depending on the idea, may occur almost immediately or with considerable effort - allows the mind to reject what it intially accepted as fact.
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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.
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Pride is over-estimation of oneself by reason of self-love.
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The more we understand individual things, the more we understand God.
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The more intelligible a thing is, the more easily it is retained in the memory, and counterwise, the less intelligible it is, the more easily we forget it.
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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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Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things.
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Ceremonies are no aid to blessedness.