Spinoza Quotes

“Spinoza wrote the last indisputable Latin masterpiece, and one in which the refined conceptions of medieval philosophy are finally turned against themselves and destroyed entirely. He chose a single word from that language for his device: caute – ‘be cautious’ – inscribed beneath a rose, the symbol of secrecy. For, having chosen to write in a language that was so widely intelligible, he was compelled to hide what he had written.”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“Some of the greatest achievements of modern philosophy result from the attempt to reconcile the belief in human freedom with the eternal laws of God’s nature, and among these achievements Spinoza’s is not only the most imaginative and profound, but perhaps the only one that is truly plausible.”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“Contact with secular and Christian ways of thinking increased Spinoza’s dissatisfaction with the biblical interpretations he received from the rabbis, who in turn frowned on his interest in natural science, and on his study of the pernicious Latin language, in which so much heresy and blasphemy had been so engagingly expressed.”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“The picture of a universe of infinitely many wholly unrelated substances is at least as hard to understand as the monism of Spinoza, and far less easy to reconcile with appearances.”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“Spinoza follows Maimonides in rejecting the ordinary meanings which attach to words, and in asking his readers to attend, not to language, but to the ‘ideas’ which he is attempting to convey by means of it. Common usage is governed by the imagination, which associates words, not with clear and distinct ideas, but with the confused conceptions of experience. In the language of imagination nothing can be truly described, and nothing is more misleadingly rendered by the imagination than the ultimate subject matter of philosophical speculation – God himself”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“Religious quarrels,’ he added, ‘do not arise so much from ardent zeal for religion, as from men’s various dispositions and love of contradiction, which causes them habitually to distort and condemn everything, however rightly it may have been said.”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“To the mass of mankind, therefore, the philosopher may appear as a spiritual saboteur, a subverter of things lawfully established, and an apologist for the devil. So Spinoza appeared to his contemporaries, and for many years after his death he was regarded as the greatest heretic of the 17th century.”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“Είμαστε πλάσματα που καταδυναστευόμαστε από το σώμα,από τις επιθυμίες μας.Όμως μας πλήττουν και μας πληγώνουν εξωτερικοί παράγοντες και εγκλωβιζόμαστε μέσα στο σύστημα του αιτίου και του αποτελέσματος.Υπό αυτές τις συνθήκες υπάρχει μία μόνο αληθινή σοφία κι αυτή είναι να μεγαλώσουμε τη δύναμή μας,και να επιβεβαιώσουμε,όσο αυτό είναι δυνατόν,πως ό,τι μας συμβαίνει το έχουμε προκαλέσει εμείς οι ίδιοι.”
― Roger Scruton , Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“The philosopher and the scientist emphasize different features of the world, follow different interests and inspire different passions in the soul. But the aim of their study is in each case the same: the supreme good which consists in the adequate knowledge of God”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“Throughout the proofs of the Ethics, therefore, the reader can never be certain whether the extraordinary ideas which are brought so compellingly before him are fiction or reality.”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“We must inevitably conclude, therefore, that the main influences over Spinoza’s thought during his formative years were not those philosophers, such as Descartes, to whom he later devoted his attention, but the Jewish and Muslim writers of earlier centuries, whose thoughts provided the main arguments of contemporary Judaism.”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“While Spinoza did not condemn marriage, he rejected it for himself, perhaps fearing the ‘ill temper of a woman’, and in any case recognizing in matrimony a threat to his scholarly interests.”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“The seclusion of Spinoza’s life was necessitated by intense labour and intellectual discipline, and his frugality expressed independence of spirit rather than meanness or self-concern. The strength of Spinoza’s social feelings, and his Aristotelian emphasis on friendship as a necessary human good, are abundantly shown in the Ethics.”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“In the event things got worse, and Spinoza gave up the idea of publishing the Ethics, believing that it would create such a cloud of hostility as to obscure, in the minds even of reasonable people, the real meaning of its arguments. Meanwhile, the book was read attentively, and at least one club existed for the express purpose of working through its proofs.”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“The letters between the two philosophers were cordial, although Spinoza at first distrusted Leibniz, who in turn referred to him privately as ‘a Jew expelled from the synagogue for his monstrous opinions’. Since the fundamental assumptions behind their two systems are profoundly similar, it is perhaps not surprising that the two philosophers – whose conclusions are wholly opposed – should have treated each other with a certain caution.”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“At the same time, there flourished around them an equally remarkable, and for us more interesting, defiance of the Calvinist spirit: the art and culture of the Netherlands, in which man’s relation to the world of objects, and to his own physical life, became the subject of a profound spiritual interrogation.”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“While he joined eagerly in the contemporary intellectual battles, philosophy was, for Spinoza, not a weapon but a way of life, a sacred order whose servants were transported to a supreme and certain blessedness.”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“Spinoza left a celebrated description of his life’s endeavour: After experience had taught me that all things which frequently take place in ordinary life are vain and futile; when I saw that all the things I feared and which feared me had nothing good or bad in them save in so far as the mind was affected by them, I determined at last to inquire whether there might be anything which might be truly good and able to communicate its goodness, and by which the mind might be affected to the exclusion of all other things: I determined, I say, to inquire whether I might discover and acquire the faculty of enjoying throughout eternity continual supreme happiness. (”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction