Baruch Spinoza Quotes

106 Sourced Quotes

Will and Intellect are one and the same thing.

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

Baruch Spinoza
Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labor be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

Baruch Spinoza
Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

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

Baruch Spinoza
If men's minds were as easily controlled as their tongues, every king would sit safely on his throne, and government by compulsion would cease; for every subject would shape his life according to the intentions of his rulers, and would esteem a thing true or false, good or evil, just or unjust, in obedience to their dictates.

Baruch Spinoza
If anyone conceives, that an object of his love joins itself to another with closer bonds of friendship than he himself has attained to, he will be affected with hatred towards the loved object and with envy towards his rival.

Baruch Spinoza
The safest way for a state is to lay down the rule that religion is comprised solely in the exercise of charity and justice, and that the rights of rulers in sacred, no less than in secular matters, should merely have to do with actions, but that every man should think what he likes and say what he thinks.

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
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.

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
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.

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

Baruch Spinoza
Man can, indeed, act contrarily to the decrees of God, as far as they have been written like laws in the minds of ourselves or the prophets, but against that eternal decree of God, which is written in universal nature, and has regard to the course of nature as a whole, he can do nothing.

Baruch Spinoza
A man would perish of hunger and thirst, if he refused to eat or drink, till he had obtained positive proof that food and drink would be good for him. But in philosophic reflection this is not so. On the contrary, we must take care not to admit as true anything, which is only probable. For when one falsity has been let in, infinite others follow.

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

Baruch Spinoza
I refer those actions which work out the good of the agent to courage, and those which work out the good of others to nobility. Therefore temperance, sobriety, and presence of mind in danger, etc., are species of courage; but modesty, clemency, etc., are species of nobility.

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
As men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another to scoff, I conclude … that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits; each would then obey God freely with his whole heart, while nothing would be publicly honored save justice and charity.

Baruch Spinoza
My purpose is to explain, not the meaning of words, but the nature of things.

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
Minds are not conquered by force, but by love and high-mindedness.

Baruch Spinoza
In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.

Baruch Spinoza