Baruch Spinoza Quotes

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.

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.

What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.

Nothing in nature is by chance... Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.

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

The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition.

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

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

The holy word of God is on everyone's lips...but...we see almost everyone presenting their own versions of God's word, with the sole purpose of using religion as a pretext for making others think as they do.

Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.

When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.

God is not He who is, but That which is.

He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.

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.

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

All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.

Minds are not conquered by force, but by love and high-mindedness.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for honor.

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

Indulge yourself in pleasures only in so far as they are necessary for the preservation of health.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

He who loves God cannot endeavor that God should love him in return.