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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.
Baruch Spinoza -
When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.
Baruch Spinoza
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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.
Baruch Spinoza -
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.
Baruch Spinoza -
It is usually the case with most men that their nature is so constituted that they pity those who fare badly and envy those who fare well.
Baruch Spinoza -
The terms good and bad indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking or notions, which we form from the comparison of things one with another. Thus one and the same thing can be at the same time good, bad, and indifferent. For instance, music is good for him that is melancholy, bad for him that mourns; for him that is deaf; it is neither good nor bad.
Baruch Spinoza -
I can control my passions and emotions if I can understand their nature.
Baruch Spinoza -
The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.
Baruch Spinoza
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I believe that a triangle, if it could speak, would say that God is eminently triangular, and a circle that the divine nature is eminently circular; and thus would every one ascribe his own attributes to God.
Baruch Spinoza -
...The body is affected by the image of the thing, in the same way as if the thing were actually present.
Baruch Spinoza -
Yet nature cannot be contravened, but preserves a fixed and immutable order.
Baruch Spinoza -
Self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.
Baruch Spinoza -
The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed along with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal.
Baruch Spinoza -
Big fish eat small fish with as much right as they have power.
Baruch Spinoza
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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.
Baruch Spinoza -
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.
Baruch Spinoza -
From what has been said we can clearly understand the nature of Love and Hate. Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause: Hate is nothing else but pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause. We further see, that he who loves necessarily endeavors to have, and to keep present to him, the object of his love; while he who hates endeavors to remove and destroy the object of his hatred.
Baruch Spinoza -
If anyone conceives that he is loved by another, and believes that he has given no cause for such love, he will love that other in return.
Baruch Spinoza -
He who hates anyone will endeavor to do him an injury, unless he fears that a greater injury will thereby accrue to himself; on the other hand, he who loves anyone will, by the same law, seek to benefit him.
Baruch Spinoza -
The mind can only imagine anything, or remember what is past, while the body endures.
Baruch Spinoza
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Simply from the fact that we have regarded a thing with the emotion of pleasure or pain, though that thing be not the efficient cause of the emotion, we can either love or hate it.
Baruch Spinoza -
Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.
Baruch Spinoza -
Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.
Baruch Spinoza -
We must take care not to admit as true anything, which is only probable. For when one falsity has been let in, infinite others follow.
Baruch Spinoza