“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure….you are above everything distressing.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.”
― Baruch De Spinoza
“Do not weep. Do not wax indignant. Understand.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter”
― Baruch Spinoza
“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.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“Further conceive, I beg, that a stone, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavoring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such a stone, being conscious merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“The greatest secret of monarchic rule…is to keep men deceived and to cloak in the specious name of religion the fear by which they must be checked, so that they will fight for slavery as they would for salvation, and will think it not shameful, but a most honorable achievement, to give their life and blood that one man may have a ground for boasting.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“There can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“Of all the things that are beyond my power, I value nothing more highly than to be allowed the honor of entering into bonds of friendship with people who sincerely love truth. For, of things beyond our power, I believe there is nothing in the world which we can love with tranquility except such men.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself; nor do we delight in happiness because we restrain from our lusts; but on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore we are able to restrain them.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
“None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.”
― Benedict Spinoza
“The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love. Hatred which is completely vanquished by love, passes into love; and love is thereupon greater, than id hatred had not preceded it. ”
― Baruch Spinoza
“Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are determined.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“We feel and experience ourselves to be eternal.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason”
― Baruch Spinoza
“Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to another.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“The superstitious know how to reproach people for their vices better than they know how to teach them virtues, and they strive, not to guide men by reason, but to restrain them by fear, so that they flee the evil rather than love virtues. Such people aim only to make others as wretched as they themselves are, so it is no wonder that they are generally burdensome and hateful to men.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare”
― baruch spinoza
“I should attempt to treat human vice and folly geometrically… the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from the necessity and efficacy of nature… I shall, therefore, treat the nature and strength of the emotion in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused”
― Baruch Spinoza
“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.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“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 joyfully”
― Baruch Spinoza
“everyone endeavors as much as possible to make others love what he loves, and to hate what he hates… This effort to make everyone approve what we love or hate is in truth ambition, and so we see that each person by nature desires that other persons should live according to his way of thinking…”
― Baruch Spinoza
“Don’t cry and don’t rage. Understand.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“No reason compels me to maintain that the body does not die unless it is changed into a corpse. And, indeed, experience seems to urge a different conclusion. Sometimes a man undergoes such changes that I should hardly have said he was the same man.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.”
― Baruch Spinoza
“Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.”
― Spinoza