Top 228 Quotes & Sayings by Baruch Spinoza

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza.

Last updated on September 14, 2024.

Baruch (de) Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish origin. One of the foremost exponents of 17th-century Rationalism and one of the early and seminal thinkers of the Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism including modern conceptions of the self and the universe, he came to be considered "one of the most important philosophers—and certainly the most radical—of the early modern period." Inspired by the groundbreaking ideas of René Descartes, Spinoza became a leading philosophical figure of the Dutch Golden Age. Spinoza's given name, which means "Blessed", varies among different languages. In Hebrew, his full name is written ברוך שפינוזה‎. "In most of the documents and records contemporary with Spinoza's years within the Jewish community, his name is given as 'Bento'". In his works in Latin, he used the name Benedictus de Spinoza.

Dutch - Philosopher | November 24, 1632 - February 21, 1677

Source: Wikipedia

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

Baruch Spinoza

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.

Baruch Spinoza

Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men.

Baruch Spinoza

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

Baruch Spinoza

Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.

Baruch Spinoza

Desire is the very essence of man.

Baruch Spinoza

We feel and know that we are eternal.

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

Desire is the essence of a man.

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

Baruch Spinoza

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 Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.

Baruch Spinoza

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

Baruch Spinoza

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.

Baruch Spinoza

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

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

Baruch Spinoza

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

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

Baruch Spinoza

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.

Baruch Spinoza

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

Baruch Spinoza

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

Baruch Spinoza

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

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

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition.

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

The holy word of God is on everyone's lips...but...we see almost everyone presenting their own versions of God's word, with the sole purpose of using religion as a pretext for making others think as they do.

Baruch Spinoza

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

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

Baruch Spinoza

Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.

Baruch Spinoza

Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.

Baruch Spinoza

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

Baruch Spinoza

He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.

Baruch Spinoza