Baruch Spinoza Quotes

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.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.

Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.

Nothing in nature is by chance... Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.

The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.

Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.

What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.

[Believers] are but triflers who, when they cannot explain a thing, run back to the will of God; this is, truly, a ridiculous way of expressing ignorance.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.

What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness.

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.

He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.

Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them.

When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.

We feel and know that we are eternal.

God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.

Superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear.

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible ; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another.

He who loves God cannot endeavor that God should love him in return.

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

If facts conflict with a theory, either the theory must be changed or the facts.

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.

Freedom is self-determination.

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.

Nature has no goal in view, and final causes are only human imaginings.

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.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.

Men who are ruled by reason desire nothing for themselves which they would not wish for all mankind.

Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.

Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause, and hatred pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause.

Sadness diminishes a man's powers

Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.

Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.

A good thing which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil.

The greatest good is the knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole nature.

There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.

God is not He who is, but That which is.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.

In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

Speculation, like nature, abhors a vacuum.