Baruch Spinoza Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Baruch Spinoza on Wise Famous Quotes.
Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men.
The mind has greater power over the emotions, and is less subject thereto, insofar as it understands all things to be necessary.
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
Schisms do not originate in a love of truth, which is a source of courtesy and gentleness, but rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy.
The greater emotion with which we conceive a loved object to be affected toward us, the greater will be our complacency.
A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.
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.
In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible ; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another.
The eternal wisdom of God ... has shown itself forth in all things, but chiefly in the mind of man, and most of all in Jesus Christ.
Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
If Scripture were to describe the downfall of an empire in the style adopted by political historians, the common people would not be stirred.
Those, who are believed to be most self - abased and humble, are generally in reality the most ambitious and envious
Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause, and hatred pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause.
I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy, I know that I understand the true philosophy.
It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.
The real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment which they are unable to tyrannize over.
Nothing in Nature is random. A thing appears random only through the incompleteness of our knowledge.
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.
Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.
The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.
The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.
Love is nothing but Joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause (Ethics, part III, proposition 13, scholium).
It is sure that those are most desirous of honour or glory who cry out loudest of its abuse and the vanity of the world.
Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.
All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.
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.
Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.
If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.
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.
The virtue of a free man appears equally great in refusing to face difficulties as in overcoming them.
He who has a true idea, knows at that same time that he has a true idea, nor can he doubt concerning the truth of the thing.
Statesman are suspected of plotting against mankind, rather than consulting their interests, and are esteemed more crafty than learned.
Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.
Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.
Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them.
I have tried sedulously not to laugh at the acts of man, nor to lament them, nor to detest them, but to understand them.
Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's; but under nature everything belongs to all.
Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.
Men will find that they can ... avoid far more easily the perils which beset them on all sides by united action.