Patrick Steffy > Patrick's Quotes

“I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's
why.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.”
― Jack Kerouac

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

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

“Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.”
― Baruch De Spinoza, Ethics

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

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

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

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

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

“Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.”
― 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

“Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”
― Jane Goodall

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”
― Alice Walker