Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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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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Laws which can be broken without any wrong to one's neighbor are a laughing-stock; and such laws, instead of restraining the appetites and lusts of mankind, serve rather to heighten them. Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata [we always resist prohibitions, and yearn for what is denied us].
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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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Big fish eat small fish with as much right as they have power.
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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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Everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find.
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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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According as each has been educated, so he repents of or glories in his actions.
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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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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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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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Indulge yourself in pleasures only in so far as they are necessary for the preservation of health.
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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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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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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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Pride is over-estimation of oneself by reason of self-love.
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The mind can only imagine anything, or remember what is past, while the body endures.
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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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Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.
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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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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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The more we understand individual things, the more we understand God.
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Ceremonies are no aid to blessedness.