Baruch Spinoza Quotes

106 Sourced Quotes

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

Baruch Spinoza
The doctrines added by certain churches, such as that God took upon himself human nature, I have expressly said that I do not understand; in fact, to speak the truth, they seem to me no less absurd than would a statement, that a circle had taken upon itself the nature of a square.

Baruch Spinoza
Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's ; but, under nature, everything belongs to all — that is, they have authority to claim it for themselves. But, under dominion, where it is by common law determined what belongs to this man, and what to that, he is called just who has a constant will to render to every man his own, but he, unjust who strives, on the contrary, to make his own that which belongs to another.

Baruch Spinoza
It is not possible that we should remember that we existed before our body, for our can bear no trace of such existence, neither can eternity be defined in terms of time or have any relation to time. But notwithstanding, we feel and know that we are eternal.

Baruch Spinoza
All men are born ignorant of the causes of things, and... all have a desire of acquiring what is useful.

Baruch Spinoza
Nature has set no end before herself, and... all final causes are nothing but human fictions.

Baruch Spinoza
All the objects pursued by the multitude not only bring no remedy that tends to preserve our being, but even act as hinderances, causing the death not seldom of those who possess them, and always of those who are possessed by them.

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

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

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

Baruch Spinoza
I understand that to be CAUSE OF ITSELF (causa sui) whose essence involves existence and whose nature cannot be conceived unless existing.

Baruch Spinoza
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.

Baruch Spinoza
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 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
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.

Baruch Spinoza