Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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We are so constituted by Nature that we easily believe the things we hope for, but believe only with difficulty those we fear, and that we regard such things more or less highly than is just. This is the source of the superstitions by which men everywhere are troubled.
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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.
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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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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.
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Since love of God is the highest felicity and happiness of man, his final end and the aim of all his actions, it follows that he alone observes the divine law who is concerned to love God not from fear of punishment nor love of something else, such as pleasure, fame, ect., but from the single fact that he knows God, or that he knows that the knowledge and love of God is the highest good.
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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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Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.
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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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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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When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.
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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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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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I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy, I know that I understand the true philosophy.
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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.
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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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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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...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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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.
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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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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.
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Laws directed against opinions affect the generous-minded rather than the wicked, and are adapted less for coercing criminals than for irritating the upright.
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Whatsoever is, is in God.
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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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If we love something similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring it about that it should love us in return.