True knowledge of good and evil as we possess is merely abstract or general, and the judgment which we pass on the order of things and the connection of causes, with a view to determining what is good or bad for us in the present, is rather imaginary than real.
Baruch SpinozaNo one doubts but that we imagine time from the very fact that we imagine other bodies to be moved slower or faster or equally fast. We are accustomed to determine duration by the aid of some measure of motion.
Baruch SpinozaSin 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 Spinoza