Baruch Spinoza Quotes

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.

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.

I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes and solids.

Everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find.

A man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present.

Yet nature cannot be contravened, but preserves a fixed and immutable order.

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 greater emotion with which we conceive a loved object to be affected toward us, the greater will be our complacency.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.

Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility.

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

whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived

The good which every man, who follows after virtue, desires for himself he will also desire for other men...

Don’t cry and don’t rage. Understand.

Every person should embrace those [dogmas] that he, being the best judge of himself, feels will do most to strengthen in him love of justice.

Falsity consists in the privation of knowledge, which inadequate, fragmentary, or confused ideas involve.

The purpose of the state is really freedom.

Scriptural doctrine contains not abstruse speculation or philosophic reasoning, but very simple matters able to be understood by the most sluggish mind.

If Scripture were to describe the downfall of an empire in the style adopted by political historians, the common people would not be stirred.

He who has a true idea simultaneously knows that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt of the truth of the thing perceived.

The order and connection of ideas in the same as the order and connection of things

The object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body

I saw that all the things I feared and which feared me had nothing good or bad in them save in so far as the mind was affected by them.

For though men be ignorant, yet they are men

Nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition

men, in so far as they live in obedience to reason necessarily do only such things as are necessarily good for human nature, and consequently for each individual man.

those, who are believed to be most self—abased and humble, are generally in reality the most ambitious and envious

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.

Do not weep do not wax indignant. Understand.

To be what we are and to become what we are capable of becoming is the only end of life.

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

We can always get along better by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and remorse. Harmful are these and evil.

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.

Do not weep do not wax indignant. Understand.