Baruch Spinoza Quotes - Page 5

Everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

Whatsoever is, is in God.

In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible ; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another.

Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues.

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune.

Speculation, like nature, abhors a vacuum.

Only free men are thoroughly grateful one to another.

All is One (Nature, God)

Laws directed against opinions affect the generous-minded rather than the wicked, and are adapted less for coercing criminals than for irritating the upright.

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.

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.

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.

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

Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

Everything in nature is a cause from which there flows some effect.

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

Yet nature cannot be contravened, but preserves a fixed and immutable order.

Reality and perfection are synonymous.

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.

Statesman are suspected of plotting against mankind, rather than consulting their interests, and are esteemed more crafty than learned.

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.

God and all attributes of God are eternal.