Baruch Spinoza > Quotes

“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Do not weep. Do not wax indignant. Understand.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“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.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“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.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“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.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“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.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Spinoza in der europäischen Geistesgeschichte

“No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise

“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt
~
but everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love. Hatred which is completely vanquished by love, passes into love; and love is thereupon greater, than id hatred had not preceded it. ”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“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.”
― Baruch Spinoza

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

“Omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt
(All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare)”
― Baruch Spinoza

“There can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“I should attempt to treat human vice and folly geometrically... the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from the necessity and efficacy of nature... I shall, therefore, treat the nature and strength of the emotion in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“G-d is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Der Endzweck des Staates ist [...] im Grund die Freiheit.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“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.”
― Baruch Spinoza