Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.
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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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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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Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.
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A good thing which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil.
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Whatsoever is, is in God.
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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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I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes and solids.
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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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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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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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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.
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He who loves God cannot endeavor that God should love him in return.
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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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Ambition is the immoderate desire for honor.
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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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Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.
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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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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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Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.
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Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.
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The mind has greater power over the emotions, and is less subject thereto, insofar as it understands all things to be necessary.
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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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The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.