Top 228 Quotes & Sayings by Baruch Spinoza - Page 3

Pride is over-estimation of oneself by reason of self-love.

In the mind there is no absolute or free will.

Laws directed against opinions affect the generous-minded rather than the wicked, and are adapted less for coercing criminals than for irritating the upright.

If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune.

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

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

.... we are a part of nature as a whole, whose order we follow.

Schisms do not originate in a love of truth, which is a source of courtesy and gentleness, but rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy.

I saw that all things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save insofar as the mind was affected by them.

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.

He that can carp in the most eloquent or acute manner at the weakness of the human mind is held by his fellows as almost divine.

If anyone conceives that he is loved by another, and believes that he has given no cause for such love, he will love that other in return.

The virtue of a free man appears equally great in refusing to face difficulties as in overcoming them.

The more intelligible a thing is, the more easily it is retained in the memory, and counterwise, the less intelligible it is, the more easily we forget it.

Love or hatred towards a thing, which we conceive to be free, must, other things being similar, be greater than if it were felt towards a thing acting by necessity.

The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed along with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal.

Everyone has as much right as he has might.

We strive to further the occurrence of whatever we imagine will lead to Joy, and to avert or destroy what we imagine is contrary to it, or will lead to Sadness.

The mind can only imagine anything, or remember what is past, while the body endures.

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.

Reality and perfection are synonymous.

God and all attributes of God are eternal.

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

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

Men will find that they can ... avoid far more easily the perils which beset them on all sides by united action.

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

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

Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak.

There is no fear without some hope, and no hope without some fear.

Statesman are suspected of plotting against mankind, rather than consulting their interests, and are esteemed more crafty than learned.

A miracle signifies nothing more than an event... the cause of which cannot be explained by another familiar instance, or.... which the narrator is unable to explain.

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.

Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause, and hatred pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause.

If we love something similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring it about that it should love us in return.

After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.

All laws which can be broken without any injury to another, are counted but a laughing-stock, and are so far from bridling the desires and lusts of men, that on the contrary they stimulate them.

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

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

Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods.

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.

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

In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible ; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another.

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

Men are especially intolerant of serving and being ruled by, their equals.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for honor.

God is a thing that thinks.

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

In regard to intellect and true virtue, every nation is on a par with the rest, and God has not in these respects chosen one people rather than another.

Whatever increases, decreases, limits or extends the body's power of action, increases decreases, limits, or extends the mind's power of action. And whatever increases, decreases, limits, or extends the mind's power of action, also increases, decreases, limits, or extends the body's power of action.

The real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment which they are unable to tyrannize over.

In so far as men are influenced by envy or any kind of hatred, one towards another, they are at variance, and are therefore to be feared in proportion, as they are more powerful than their fellows. Yet minds are not conquered by force, but by love and high-mindedness.

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 the same in her efficacy 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 the same; 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.

The more a government strives to curtail freedom of speech, the more obstinately is it resisted; not indeed by the avaricious, ... but by those whom good education, sound morality, and virtue have rendered more free.

He who hates anyone will endeavor to do him an injury, unless he fears that a greater injury will thereby accrue to himself; on the other hand, he who loves anyone will, by the same law, seek to benefit him.

He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.

self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.

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.

The proper study of a wise man is not how to die but how to live.

To comprehend an idea, a person must simultaneously accept it as true. Conscious analysis - which, depending on the idea, may occur almost immediately or with considerable effort - allows the mind to reject what it intially accepted as fact.

I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy, I know that I understand the true philosophy.