Baruch Spinoza quotes:

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

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.

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.

Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.

There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.

Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men.

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.

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

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

Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.

Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

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

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

Desire is the very essence of man.

Desire is the essence of a man.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.

Of all the things that are beyond my power, I value nothing more highly than to be allowed the honor of entering into bonds of friendship with people who sincerely love truth. For, of things beyond our power, I believe there is nothing in the world which we can love with tranquility except such men.

Laws which prescribe what everyone must believe, and forbid men to say or write anything against this or that opinion, are often passed to gratify, or rather to appease the anger of those who cannot abide independent minds.

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.

God and all attributes of God are eternal.

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.

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.

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.

Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

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

The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.

I believe that a triangle, if it could speak, would say that God is eminently triangular, and a circle that the divine nature is eminently circular; and thus would every one ascribe his own attributes to God.

The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.

All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

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

If a man had begun to hate an object of his love, so that love is thoroughly destroyed, he will, causes being equal, regard it with more hatred than if he had never loved it, and his hatred will be in proportion to the strength of his former love.

What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness.

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.

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

Nothing in nature is by chance... Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.

No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.

Simply from the fact that we have regarded a thing with the emotion of pleasure or pain, though that thing be not the efficient cause of the emotion, we can either love or hate it.

everyone endeavors as much as possible to make others love what he loves, and to hate what he hates... This effort to make everyone approve what we love or hate is in truth ambition, and so we see that each person by nature desires that other persons should live according to his way of thinking...

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.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice

The greatest secret of monarchic rule...is to keep men deceived and to cloak in the specious name of religion the fear by which they must be checked, so that they will fight for slavery as they would for salvation, and will think it not shameful, but a most honorable achievement, to give their life and blood that one man may have a ground for boasting.

Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens.

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.

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

Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

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

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

Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.

That by the decrees and volitions, and consequently the providence of God, Scripture (as I will prove by Scriptural examples) means nothing but Nature's order following necessarily from her eternal laws.

It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to another.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

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.

The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure....you are above everything distressing.

No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

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

For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long as he is determined not to do it; and consequently so long as it is impossible to him that he should do it.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.

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

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

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.

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.

The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation.

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.

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

Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them.

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

Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.

Big fish eat small fish with as much right as they have power.

Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.

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

When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.

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.

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 thesame in her efficiency 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; 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Nature has no goal in view, and final causes are only human imaginings.

Further conceive, I beg, that a stone, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavoring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such a stone, being conscious merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.

Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.

Freedom is self-determination.

Laws which can be broken without any wrong to one's neighbor are a laughing-stock; and such laws, instead of restraining the appetites and lusts of mankind, serve rather to heighten them. Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata [we always resist prohibitions, and yearn for what is denied us].

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.

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

All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men's thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden... He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it.

We are so constituted by Nature that we easily believe the things we hope for, but believe only with difficulty those we fear, and that we regard such things more or less highly than is just. This is the source of the superstitions by which men everywhere are troubled. For the rest, I don

Speculation, like nature, abhors a vacuum.

A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.

If facts conflict with a theory, either the theory must be changed or the facts.

Men who are ruled by reason desire nothing for themselves which they would not wish for all mankind.

He whose honor depends on the opinion of the mob must day by day strive with the greatest anxiety, act and scheme in order to retain his reputation. For the mob is varied and inconsistent, and therefore if a reputation is not carefully preserved it dies quickly.

Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.

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.

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.

I can control my passions and emotions if I can understand their nature

the ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain by fear, nor to exact obedience, but to free every man from fear that he may live in all possible security... In fact the true aim of government is liberty.

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

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

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

[Believers] are but triflers who, when they cannot explain a thing, run back to the will of God; this is, truly, a ridiculous way of expressing ignorance.

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 holy word of God is on everyone's lips...but...we see almost everyone presenting their own versions of God's word, with the sole purpose of using religion as a pretext for making others think as they do.

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