Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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Everything in nature is a cause from which there flows some effect.
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According as each has been educated, so he repents of or glories in his actions.
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Statesman are suspected of plotting against mankind, rather than consulting their interests, and are esteemed more crafty than learned.
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Ceremonies are no aid to blessedness.
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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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The proper study of a wise man is not how to die but how to live.
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To understand something is to be delivered of it.
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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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We strive to further the occurrence of whatever we imagine will lead to Joy, and to avert or destroy what we imagine is contrary to it, or will lead to Sadness.
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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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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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If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune.
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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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What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness.
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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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No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.
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Big fish eat small fish with as much right as they have power.
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If anyone conceives, that an object of his love joins itself to another with closer bonds of friendship than he himself has attained to, he will be affected with hatred towards the loved object and with envy towards his rival.
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Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.
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Freedom is self-determination.
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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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The more we understand individual things, the more we understand God.
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Everyone endeavors as much as possible to make others love what he loves, and to hate what he hates... This effort to make everyone approve what we love or hate is in truth ambition, and so we see that each person by nature desires that other persons should live according to his way of thinking.
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Yet nature cannot be contravened, but preserves a fixed and immutable order.