Baruch Spinoza famous quotes

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Philosophical #Learning #Past

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

#Wisdom #Philosophical #Effort

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Inspirational #Education #Understanding

Nothing in nature is by chance... Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Life #Chance #Lack Of Knowledge

The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Love #Emotional #Emotion

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

#Two Sides #Two #Matter

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

#Truth #Science #Ideas

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

#Flow #Causes

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Inspirational #Without Hope

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

#Lust #Delight #Rewards

We feel and know that we are eternal.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Awareness #Feels

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

#Wisdom #Peace #Military

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

#Philosophical #Men #Silence

What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Life #Want #Genuine Happiness

It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Reality #Men #Nuisance

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

#Believe #Moving #Men

God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Philosophical #Causes

Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Philosophical #Pride #Men

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

#War #Tyrants #Evil

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

#Giving Up #Real #Struggle

Hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love: and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it...
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Life #Love Is #Hatred

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Philosophical

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Philosophical #Guidance #Reason

How would it be possible if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labor be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Men #Hands #Excellent

Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Excellent #Difficult

So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long as he is determined not to do it; and consequently so long as it is impossible to him that he should do it.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Men #Long #Determined

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

#Mind #Eternity #Aspect

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Happy #Rewards #Virtue

Laws which prescribe what everyone must believe, and forbid men to say or write anything against this or that opinion, are often passed to gratify, or rather to appease the anger of those who cannot abide independent minds.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Believe #Writing #Independent

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.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Believe #Circles #Triangles

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

#Government #Opinion #Crime

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Rewards #Virtue #Blessedness

There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Fear #Philosophical #Breast Cancer

All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Happy #Philosophical #Quality

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Philosophical #Men #Long

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, and can moderate their desires more easily than their words.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Men #Desire #Tongue

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Intellect

All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Inspirational #Excellence #Philosopher

Indulge yourself in pleasures only in so far as they are necessary for the preservation of health.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Healthy #Pleasure #Preservation

He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Absurdity

No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Laughing #Lament

There is no fear without some hope, and no hope without some fear.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#No Fear #No Hope

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

#Desire

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#God #Faith #Hope

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

#Order #Mind #Function

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.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#God #Order #Different

God is the efficient cause not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence. Corr. Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#God #Essence #Causes

Nothing comes to pass in nature, which can be set down to a flaw therein; for nature is always the same and everywhere one and thesame in her efficiency and power of action; that is, nature's laws and ordinances whereby all things come to pass and change from one form to another, are everywhere and always; so that there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely, through nature's universal laws and rules.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Nature #Law #Understanding

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

#Order #Ideas #Connections

Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favours, they are consequently for the most part, very prone to credulity.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Men #Religion #Useless

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

#Men #Laughing #Understanding

No 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 Spinoza

#Doubt #Body #Duration

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Philosophical #Virtue #Reason

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.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Life #Hate #Thinking

Simply from the fact that we have regarded a thing with the emotion of pleasure or pain, though that thing be not the efficient cause of the emotion, we can either love or hate it.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Life #Pain #Hate

From what has been said we can clearly understand the nature of Love and Hate. Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause: Hate is nothing else but pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause. We further see, that he who loves necessarily endeavors to have, and to keep present to him, the object of his love; while he who hates endeavors to remove and destroy the object of his hatred.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Life #Pain #Hate

Except God no substance can be granted or conceived. .. Everything, I say, is in God, and all things which are made, are made by the laws of the infinite nature of God, and necessarily follows from the necessity of his essence.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Law #Essence #Substance

If the way which I have pointed out as leading to this result (i.e., power over the emotions by which the wise man surpasses the ignorant man) seems exceedingly hard, it may nevertheless be discovered. Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labour be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Wise #Men #Hands

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

#Philosophical #Taken #Wish

To understand something is to be delivered of it.
-- Baruch Spinoza

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

#Realizing #Difficult

Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Truth #Knowledge #Errors

Measure, time and number are nothing but modes of thought or rather of imagination.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Science #Numbers #Imagination

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Men #Desire #Tongue

A good thing which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Evil #Good Things #Enjoy

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.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Men #Envy #Human Nature

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.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Vanity #Abuse #Honor

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Nature #Philosophical #Environment

We are so constituted by Nature that we easily believe the things we hope for, but believe only with difficulty those we fear, and that we regard such things more or less highly than is just. This is the source of the superstitions by which men everywhere are troubled. For the rest, I don
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Hope #Believe #Men

The idea, which constitutes the actual being of the human mind, is not simple, but compounded of a great number of ideas.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Simple #Ideas #Numbers

The greatest good is the knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole nature.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Mind #Unions

All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men's thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden... He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Passion #Men #Law

Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Blessed #Thinking #Weak

Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Philosophical #Self #Ideas

He who lives according to the guidance of reason strives as much as possible to repay the hatred, anger, or contempt of others towards himself with love or generosity. ...hatred is increased by reciprocal hatred, and, on the other hand, can be extinguished by love, so that hatred passes into love.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Life #Hands #Generosity

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.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Past #Men #Anticipation

...The body is affected by the image of the thing, in the same way as if the thing were actually present.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Body #Way #Anticipation

We can always get along better by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and remorse...we should strive to keep worry from our life.
-- Baruch Spinoza

#Worry #And Love #Anticipation

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 Spinoza

#Gratitude #Real #Views