Baruch Spinoza - Human Quotes

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

Baruch Spinoza
I do not think it necessary for salvation to know Christ according to the flesh : but with regard to the Eternal Son of God, that is the Eternal Wisdom of God, which has manifested itself in all things and especially in the human mind, and above all in Christ Jesus, the case is far otherwise.

Baruch Spinoza
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.

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

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
I have resolved to demonstrate by a certain and undoubted course of argument, or to deduce from the very condition of human nature, not what is new and unheard of, but only such things as agree best with practice.

Baruch Spinoza
Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues.

Baruch Spinoza
Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage: for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.

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

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