Baruch Spinoza Quotes - Page 6

The things which ... are esteemed as the greatest good of all ... can be reduced to these three headings, to wit : Riches, Fame, and Pleasure. With these three the mind is so engrossed that it cannot scarcely think of any other good.

Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's; but under nature everything belongs to all.

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

In the mind there is no absolute or free will.

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

Faith is nothing but obedience and piety.

Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.

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.

Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.

A free man, who lives among ignorant people, tries as much as he can to refuse their benefits. .. He who lives under the guidance of reason endeavours as much as possible to repay his fellow's hatred, rage, contempt, etc. with love and nobleness.

A miracle signifies nothing more than an event... the cause of which cannot be explained by another familiar instance, or.... which the narrator is unable to explain.

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.

True piety for the universe but no time for religions made for man's convenience.

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.

Men are especially intolerant of serving and being ruled by, their equals.

Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.

He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.

In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.

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

God is a thing that thinks.

Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause, and hatred pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause.

To comprehend an idea, a person must simultaneously accept it as true. Conscious analysis - which, depending on the idea, may occur almost immediately or with considerable effort - allows the mind to reject what it intially accepted as fact.

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.

Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak.

Man can, indeed, act contrarily to the decrees of God, as far as they have been written like laws in the minds of ourselves or the prophets, but against that eternal decree of God, which is written in universal nature, and has regard to the course of nature as a whole, he can do nothing.