Our list of Baruch Spinoza Quotes
The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.
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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.
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I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.
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No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.
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If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.
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Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.
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I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.
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The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.
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Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.
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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.
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Do not weep. Do not wax indignant. Understand.
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When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.
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What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.
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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.
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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.
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I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
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There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.
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In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.
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Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
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The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.
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No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.
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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.
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Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.
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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.
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There can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope.
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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.
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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.
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In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.
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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.
Work in Progress...
A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.
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