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.
Baruch SpinozaAcademies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them.
Baruch SpinozaThings could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.
Baruch SpinozaThe terms good and bad indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking or notions, which we form from the comparison of things one with another. Thus one and the same thing can be at the same time good, bad, and indifferent. For instance, music is good for him that is melancholy, bad for him that mourns; for him that is deaf; it is neither good nor bad.
Baruch Spinoza