Baruch Spinoza

“I can control my passions and emotions if I can understand their nature.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“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.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

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

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

“In proportion as we endeavor to live according to the guidance of reason, shall we strive as much as possible to depend less on hope, to liberate ourselves from fear, to rule fortune, and to direct our actions by the sure counsels of reason.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Everything in nature is a cause from which there flows some effect.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“When we love a thing similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring about that it should love us in return.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

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

“Whatever increases, decreases, limits or extends the body’s power of action, increases decreases, limits, or extends the mind’s power of action. And whatever increases, decreases, limits, or extends the mind’s power of action, also increases, decreases, limits, or extends the body’s power of action.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

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

“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

“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.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Only free men are thoroughly grateful one to another.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“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.” ~ 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

“Nature offers nothing that can be called this man’s rather than another’s; but under nature everything belongs to all.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“It is sure that those are most desirous of honour or glory who cry out loudest of its abuse and the vanity of the world.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one’s self.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

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

“No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.” ~ 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

“The more intelligible a thing is, the more easily it is retained in the memory, and counterwise, the less intelligible it is, the more easily we forget it.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“The idea, which constitutes the actual being of the human mind, is not simple, but compounded of a great number of ideas.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Ceremonies are no aid to blessedness.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“The less the mind understands and the more things it perceives, the greater its power of feigning is; and the more things it understands, the more that power is diminished.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage : for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune : so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Reality and perfection are synonymous.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“The mind can only imagine anything, or remember what is past, while the body endures.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“We strive to further the occurrence of whatever we imagine will lead to Joy, and to avert or destroy what we imagine is contrary to it, or will lead to Sadness.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“All the objects pursued by the multitude not only bring no remedy that tends to preserve our being, but even act as hinderances, causing the death not seldom of those who possess them, and always of those who are possessed by them.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“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.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

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

“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.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition.” ~ 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.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“I saw that all things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save insofar as the mind was affected by them.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Reason is no match for passion.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

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

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

“Indeed, just as light makes manifest both itself and darkness, so truth is the standard both of itself and falsity.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

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

“Sadness diminishes a man’s powers.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Faith is nothing but obedience and piety.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“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.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Big fish eat small fish with as much right as they have power.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“I have laboured carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate human actions, but to understand them.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

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

“Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“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.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Nothing in Nature is random. A thing appears random only through the incompleteness of our knowledge.” ~ 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.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Let unswerving integrity be your watchword.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

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

“Everyone is by absolute natural right the master of his own thoughts, and thus utter failure will attend any attempt in a commonwealth to force men to speak only as prescribed by the sovereign despite their different and opposing opinions.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

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

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

“All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“By reality and perfection I mean the same thing.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Love is nothing but joy accompanied with the idea of an eternal cause.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“God is not He who is, but That which is.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Desire is the very essence of man.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Will and intellect are one and the same thing.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“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.” ~ 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

“It is not possible that we should remember that we existed before our body, for our can bear no trace of such existence, neither can eternity be defined in terms of time or have any relation to time. But notwithstanding, we feel and know that we are eternal.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

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

“Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.” ~ 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

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

“He who loves God cannot endeavor that God should love him in return.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“The virtue of a free man appears equally great in refusing to face difficulties as in overcoming them.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

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

“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.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“To understand something is to be delivered of it.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“True piety for the universe but no time for religions made for man’s convenience.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“The greater emotion with which we conceive a loved object to be affected toward us, the greater will be our complacency.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“I call him free who is led solely by reason.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“He who would distinguish the true from the false must have an adequate idea of what is true and false.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Measure, time and number are nothing but modes of thought or rather of imagination.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“A free man thinks of death least of all things, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed along with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Speculation, like nature, abhors a vacuum.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Don’t cry and don’t rage. Understand.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“The proper study of a wise man is not how to die but how to live.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“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.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“A good thing which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Pride is over-estimation of oneself by reason of self-love.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

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

“According as each has been educated, so he repents of or glories in his actions.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“God and all attributes of God are eternal.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

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

“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.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Schisms do not originate in a love of truth, which is a source of courtesy and gentleness, but rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“I make this chief distinction between religion and superstition, that the latter is founded on ignorance, the former on knowledge.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Citizens are not born, but made.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“We feel and know that we are eternal.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

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

“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.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“The mind has greater power over the emotions, and is less subject thereto, insofar as it understands all things to be necessary.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love: and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it…” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“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.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“If anyone conceives that he is loved by another, and believes that he has given no cause for such love, he will love that other in return.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfully.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“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.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“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

“True virtue is life under the direction of reason.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“He who hates anyone will endeavor to do him an injury, unless he fears that a greater injury will thereby accrue to himself; on the other hand, he who loves anyone will, by the same law, seek to benefit him.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“A man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“The greatest good is the knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole nature.” ~ 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

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

“No one doubts but that we imagine time from the very fact that we imagine other bodies to be moved slower or faster or equally fast. We are accustomed to determine duration by the aid of some measure of motion.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself; nor do we delight in happiness because we restrain from our lusts; but on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore we are able to restrain them.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Everyone has as much right as he has might.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“No creo que cuestionar las cosas sea una enfermedad. La obediencia ciega sin cuestionamientos, es la enfermedad.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“God is a thing that thinks.” ~ 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

“Men are especially intolerant of serving and being ruled by, their equals.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“In the mind there is no absolute or free will.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Minds are not conquered by force, but by love and high-mindedness.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Whatsoever is, is in God.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men’s natural abilities as to restrain them.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“In a state of nature nothing can be said to be just or unjust; this is so only in a civil state, where it is decided by common agreement what belongs to this or that man.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause, and hatred pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“The purpose of the state is really freedom.” ~ 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

“Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Freedom is self-determination.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

“Men who are ruled by reason desire nothing for themselves which they would not wish for all mankind.” ~ Baruch Spinoza

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