Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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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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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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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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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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Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.
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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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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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Self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.
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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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Whatsoever is, is in God.
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I can control my passions and emotions if I can understand their nature.
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Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.
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A good thing which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil.
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True knowledge of good and evil as we possess is merely abstract or general, and the judgment which we pass on the order of things and the connection of causes, with a view to determining what is good or bad for us in the present, is rather imaginary than real.
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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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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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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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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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The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.
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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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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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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.