Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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Laws which prescribe what everyone must believe, and forbid men to say or write anything against this or that opinion, are often passed to gratify, or rather to appease the anger of those who cannot abide independent minds.
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Nothing comes to pass in nature, which can be set down to a flaw therein; for nature is always the same, and everywhere one and the same in her efficacy and power of action: that is, nature's laws and ordinances, whereby all things come to pass and change from one form to another, are everywhere and always the same; so that there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely, through nature's universal laws and rules.
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He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.
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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 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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Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them.
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Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.
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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. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues.
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...The body is affected by the image of the thing, in the same way as if the thing were actually present.
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Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
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Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens.
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Love or hatred towards a thing, which we conceive to be free, must, other things being similar, be greater than if it were felt towards a thing acting by necessity.
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I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy, I know that I understand the true philosophy.
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Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.
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If a man had begun to hate an object of his love, so that love is thoroughly destroyed, he will, causes being equal, regard it with more hatred than if he had never loved it, and his hatred will be in proportion to the strength of his former love.
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Except God no substance can be granted or conceived. .. Everything, I say, is in God, and all things which are made, are made by the laws of the infinite nature of God, and necessarily follows from the necessity of his essence.
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Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.
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Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.
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Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.
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The holy word of God is on everyone's lips...but...we see almost everyone presenting their own versions of God's word, with the sole purpose of using religion as a pretext for making others think as they do.
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The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed along with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal.
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In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.
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Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.
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Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.