Baruch Spinoza Quotes

106 Sourced Quotes

A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.

Baruch Spinoza
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
But love for an object eternal and infinite feeds the mind with joy alone, and a joy which is free from all sorrow. This is something greatly to be desired and to be sought with all our strength.

Baruch Spinoza
He who loves God cannot endeavor that God should love him in return.

Baruch Spinoza
I make this chief distinction between religion and superstition, that the latter is founded on ignorance, the former on knowledge; this, I take it, is the reason why Christians are distinguished from the rest of the world, not by faith, nor by charity, nor by the other fruits of the Holy Spirit, but solely by their opinions, inasmuch as they defend their cause, like everyone else, by miracles, that is by ignorance, which is the source of all malice; thus they turn a faith, which may be true, into superstition.

Baruch Spinoza
Avarice, ambition, lust, etc., are nothing but species of madness.

Baruch Spinoza
Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favored 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 favors, they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to credulity.

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

Baruch Spinoza
Anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic.

Baruch Spinoza
In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity.

Baruch Spinoza
He who would distinguish the true from the false must have an adequate idea of what is true and false.

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

Baruch Spinoza
I have labored carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate human actions, but to understand them.

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

Baruch Spinoza
Now it is evident, from the definition above given, that prophecy really includes ordinary knowledge; for the knowledge which we acquire by our natural faculties depends on our knowledge of God and his eternal laws; but ordinary knowledge is common to all men as men, and rests on foundations which all share, whereas the multitude always strains after rarities and exceptions, and thinks little of the gifts of nature ; so that, when prophecy is talked of, ordinary knowledge is not supposed to be included.

Baruch Spinoza
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
Extreme pride or dejection indicates extreme ignorance of self.

Baruch Spinoza
Speaking generally, he holds dominion, to whom are entrusted by common consent affairs of state — such as the laying down, interpretation, and abrogation of laws, the fortification of cities, deciding on war and peace, &c. But if this charge belong to a council, composed of the general multitude, then the dominion is called a democracy ; if the council be composed of certain chosen persons, then it is an aristocracy ; and, if, lastly, the care of affairs of state, and, consequently, the dominion rest with one man, then it has the name of monarchy.

Baruch Spinoza
In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible ; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another. For no one by the law of nature is bound to please another, unless he chooses, nor to hold anything to be good or evil, but what he himself, according to his own temperament, pronounces to be so ; and, to speak generally, nothing is forbidden by the law of nature, except what is beyond everyone's power.

Baruch Spinoza
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
Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also.

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
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.

Baruch Spinoza
My opinion concerning God differs widely from that which is ordinarily defended by modern Christians. For I hold that God is of all things the cause immanent, as the phrase is, not transient. I say that all things are in God and move in God.

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

Baruch Spinoza
A definition, if it is to be called perfect, must explain the inmost essence of a thing, and must take care not to substitute for this any of its properties.

Baruch Spinoza
When we love a thing similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring about that it should love us in return.

Baruch Spinoza
If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune. No doubt there are usually more and sharper quarrels between parents and children, than between masters and slaves ; yet it advances not the art of household management to change a father's right into a right of property, and count children but as slaves. Slavery, then, and not peace, is furthered by handing the whole authority to one man.

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

Baruch Spinoza
I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes and solids.

Baruch Spinoza