Baruch Spinoza Quotes

“All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.”

“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.”

“Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from citizens.”

“Blessed are the weak who think they are good because they have no claws.”

“Citizens are not born, but made.”

“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.”

“He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.”

“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.”

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

“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.”

“In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.”

“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.”

“Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's; but under nature everything belongs to all.”

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

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

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

“Nothing in Nature is random. A thing appears random only through the incompleteness of our knowledge.”

“Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.”

“Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.”

“Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.”

“Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.”

“Reason is no match for passion.”

“Self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.”

“The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.”

“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.”

“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”

“The intellectual love of a thing consists in understanding its perfections.”

“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.”

“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.”

“There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.”

“Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.”

“What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.”

“When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.”

“Whether this desire for sex is moderate or not, it is usually called lust.”

“Will and intellect are one and the same thing.”

“I can control my passions and emotions if I can understand their nature.”

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

“A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.”

“By that which is self-caused, I mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of which the nature is only conceivable as existent.”

“Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”

“Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.”

“Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.”

“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.”

“Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility.”

“Nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition.”

“The good which every man, who follows after virtue, desires for himself he will also desire for other men.”

“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.”

“The object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body.”

“We feel and experience ourselves to be eternal.”