Baruch Spinoza Quotes

Desire is the very essence of man

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

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

Pride is over-estimation of oneself by reason of self-love.

Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also.

Sadness diminishes a man's powers

What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness.

Reality and perfection are synonymous.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

We feel and know that we are eternal.

Love or hatred towards a thing, which we conceive to be free, must, other things being similar, be greater than if it were felt towards a thing acting by necessity.

I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy, I know that I understand the true philosophy.

If we conceive that anyone loves, desires, or hates anything which we ourselves love, desire, or hate, we shall thereupon regard the thing in question with more steadfast love, etc. On the contrary, if we think that anyone shrinks from something that we love, we shall undergo vacillation of the soul.

Freedom is self-determination.

Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.

Everything in nature is a cause from which there flows some effect.

The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.

Whatsoever is, is in God.

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

It is not possible that we should remember that we existed before our body, for our can bear no trace of such existence, neither can eternity be defined in terms of time or have any relation to time. But notwithstanding, we feel and know that we are eternal.

The proper study of a wise man is not how to die but how to live.

He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them.

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.

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

. . . to know the order of nature, and regard the universe as orderly is the highest function of the mind.

The less the mind understands and the more things it perceives, the greater its power of feigning is; and the more things it understands, the more that power is diminished.

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.

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.

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.

The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.

Everyone has as much right as he has might.

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

All is One (Nature, God)

In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.

As though God had turned away from the wise, and written his decrees, not in the mind of man but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the inspiration and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. Such is the unreason to which terror can drive mankind!

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

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.

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

Since love of God is the highest felicity and happiness of man, his final end and the aim of all his actions, it follows that he alone observes the divine law who is concerned to love God not from fear of punishment nor love of something else, such as pleasure, fame, ect., but from the single fact that he knows God, or that he knows that the knowledge and love of God is the highest good

.... we are a part of nature as a whole, whose order we follow.

In proportion as we endeavor to live according to the guidance of reason, shall we strive as much as possible to depend less on hope, to liberate ourselves from fear, to rule fortune, and to direct our actions by the sure counsels of reason.

No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.

Only free men are thoroughly grateful one to another.

If anyone conceives, that an object of his love joins itself to another with closer bonds of friendship than he himself has attained to, he will be affected with hatred towards the loved object and with envy towards his rival.

Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues.

I have tried sedulously not to laugh at the acts of man, nor to lament them, nor to detest them, but to understand them.

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

As men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another to scoff, I conclude ... that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits.