Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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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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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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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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Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.
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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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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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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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We can always get along better by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and remorse...we should strive to keep worry from our life.
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Whatsoever is, is in God.
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Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things. For if a man says that the lines which are drawn from the centre of the circle to the circumference are not equal, he understands by the circle, at all events for the time, something else than mathematicians understand by it.
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The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain by fear, nor to exact obedience, but to free every man from fear that he may live in all possible security... In fact the true aim of government is liberty.
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For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from force of character: for obedience is the constant will to execute what, by the general decree of the commonwealth, ought to be done.
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For no one by the law of nature is bound to please another, unless he chooses, nor to hold anything to be good or evil, but what he himself, according to his own temperament, pronounces to be so; and, to speak generally, nothing is forbidden by the law of nature, except what is beyond everyone's power.
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How would it be possible if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labor be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
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Ambition is the immoderate desire for honor.
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The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.
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Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.
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I have tried sedulously not to laugh at the acts of man, nor to lament them, nor to detest them, but to understand them.
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Anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic.
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A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.
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He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfullyHe who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfully.
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Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.
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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.
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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.