Quotes & Sayings About Spinoza

Men believe themselves to have free will because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined. - BARUCH SPINOZA — Cris Evatt

Put even a fool in front of the window and you'll get a Spinoza; in the end life makes window watchers of us all — Nicole Krauss

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

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not. — 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 endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue. — Baruch Spinoza

God is a thing that thinks. — Baruch Spinoza

Men will find that they can ... avoid far more easily the perils which beset them on all sides by united action. — Baruch Spinoza

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

Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from citizens. — Baruch Spinoza

If this conviction had not been a strongly emotional one and if those searching for knowledge had not been inspired by Spinoza's Amor Dei Intellectualis, they would hardly have been capable of that untiring devotion which alone enables man to attain his greatest achievements. — Albert Einstein

The fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly (and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered): Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation? — Gilles Deleuze

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

To understand something is to be delivered of it. — 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

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

Nothing comes to pass in nature, which can be set down to a flaw therein; for nature is always the same and everywhere one and thesame in her efficiency and power of action; that is, nature's laws and ordinances whereby all things come to pass and change from one form to another, are everywhere and always; so that there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely, through nature's universal laws and rules. — Baruch Spinoza

What does Spinoza say in his Ethics? - "Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam." Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. The — Viktor E. Frankl

He who has a true idea, knows at that same time that he has a true idea, nor can he doubt concerning the truth of the thing. — Baruch Spinoza

Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to DISCHARGE its strength - life itself is WILL TO POWER; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent RESULTS thereof. In short, here, as everywhere else, let us beware of SUPERFLUOUS teleological principles! - one of which is the instinct of self-preservation (we owe it to Spinoza's inconsistency). — Friedrich Nietzsche

God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things. — Baruch Spinoza

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

We must take care not to admit as true anything, which is only probable. For when one falsity has been let in, infinite others follow. — Baruch Spinoza

If facts conflict with a theory, either the theory must be changed or the facts. — 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

I should attempt to treat human vice and folly geometrically ... the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from the necessity and efficacy of nature ... I shall, therefore, treat the nature and strength of the emotion in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids. — Baruch Spinoza

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

God and all attributes of God are eternal. — Baruch Spinoza

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. — Baruch Spinoza

After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness. — Baruch Spinoza

Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility. — 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

Nevertheless, when it is your lot to have to endure something that is (or seems to you) worse than the ordinary lot of mankind, Spinoza's principle of thinking about the whole, or at any rate about larger matters than your own grief, is a useful one. There are even times when it is comforting to reflect that human life, with all that is contains of evil and suffering, is an infinitesimal part of the life of the universe. Such reflections may not suffice to constitute a religion, but in a painful world they are a help towards sanity and an antidote to the paralysis of utter despair. - about Spinoza — Bertrand Russell

Every person should embrace those [dogmas] that he, being the best judge of himself, feels will do most to strengthen in him love of justice. — Baruch Spinoza

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

Pride is over-estimation of oneself by reason of self-love. — Baruch Spinoza

As though God had turned away from the wise, and written his decrees, not in the mind of man but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the inspiration and instinct of
fools, madmen, and birds. Such is the unreason to which terror can drive mankind! — 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 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

Laws which can be broken without any wrong to one's neighbor are a laughing-stock; and such laws, instead of restraining the appetites and lusts of mankind, serve rather to heighten them. Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata [we always resist prohibitions, and yearn for what is denied us]. — Baruch Spinoza

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

Through luminous and erudite readings of the texts, Hasana Sharp shows us how profound and radical is Spinoza's conception of nature and his claim that humans always remain part of nature, acting solely according to the same rules. She demonstrates the political consequences of adopting this perspective through a provocative intervention in contemporary feminist theory, while along the way opening promising avenues for future work in a variety of other fields, such as animal studies and ecology. This is a challenging and important book. — Michael Hardt

In the mind there is no absolute or free will. — Baruch Spinoza

It is here that Spinoza is in the right - a life dominated by a single passion is a narrow life, incompatible with every kind of wisdom. — Bertrand Russell

On the other hand it is probably safe to assume that Rembrandt and Spinoza surely would have at least passed on the street, now and again.
Or even run into each other quite frequently, if only at some neighborhood shop or other.
And certainly they would have exchanged amenities as well, after a time.
Good morning, Rembrandt. Good morning to you, Spinoza.
I was extremely sorry to hear about your bankruptcy, Rembrandt. I was extremely sorry to hear about your excommunication, Spinoza.
Do have a good day, Rembrandt. Do have the same, Spinoza.
All of this would have been said in Dutch, incidentally.
I mention that simply because it is known that Rembrandt did not speak any other language except Dutch.
Even if Spinoza may have preferred Latin. Or Jewish. — David Markson

Dostoevsky's nature was two-fold, like Spinoza's, and like that of nearly all those who try to awaken humanity from its torpor. — Lev Shestov

It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to another. — Baruch Spinoza

These are the prejudices which I undertook to notice here. If any others of a similar character remain, they can easily be rectified with a little thought by anyone. — Baruch Spinoza

And did not Spinoza's refusing to flee from excommunication by his church and community mean the same inner battle of integrity, the same struggle for the power not to be afraid of aloneness, without which the noble Ethics, certainly one of the great works of all time, could not have been written? — Rollo May

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

in modern philosophy, the first glimpse of the true view of the conception of 'might is right' as applying to government is to be found in the political writings of Spinoza. Briefly it is this. Government, as such, has a limited sphere of activity. This limitation is self-limitation; and the proper province of government comprehends all that it is able to accomplish. Government may not attempt that which it is unable to achieve; that which it is able to achieve is its true and proper sphere of action. Ask and answer the question, What can government do? and we have solved the problem of what it ought to do, that is, we have defined its limits and discovered its particular nature. Its might is its right. — Michael Oakeshott

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

The multitude always strains after rarities and exceptions, and thinks little of the gifts of nature; so that, when prophecy is talked of, ordinary knowledge is not supposed to be included. Nevertheless it has as much right as any other to be called Divine. — Baruch Spinoza

Since love of God is the highest felicity and happiness of man, his final end and the aim of all his actions, it follows that he alone observes the divine law who is concerned to love God not from fear of punishment nor love of something else, such as pleasure, fame, ect., but from the single fact that he knows God, or that he knows that the knowledge and love of God is the highest good — Baruch Spinoza

The purpose of the state is really freedom. — Baruch Spinoza

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

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. — 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

Desire is the very essence of man. — Baruch Spinoza

Speculation, like nature, abhors a vacuum. — Baruch Spinoza

Israel's monomaniacal Spinoza worship is amusing and exasperating by turns. For a start, his insistence that Spinoza was the singular font of the Enlightenment leaves him without a story of the Enlightenment's intellectual or cultural origins. Every historian has to begin somewhere, but the fact that Israel begins with Spinoza, and then reduces most of what follows the philosopher to a footnote, leaves his account of the Enlightenment founded on something like immaculate conception. — Samuel Moyn

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

By that which is self-caused, I mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of which the nature is only conceivable as existent. — Baruch Spinoza

Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself. — Baruch Spinoza

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

I say expressly, that the mind has not an adequate but only a confused knowledge of itself, its own body, and of external bodies, whenever it perceives things after the common order of nature; that is, whenever it is determined from without, namely, by the fortuitous play of circumstance, to regard this or that; not at such times as it is determined from within, that is, by the fact of regarding several things at once, to understand their points of agreement, difference, and contrast. Whenever it is determined in anywise from within, it regards things clearly and distinctly, as I will show below. — Baruch Spinoza

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

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd. — Baruch Spinoza

I could recite you the whole of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important." "You — Alexandre Dumas

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. — Baruch Spinoza

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

There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope. — Baruch Spinoza

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

I have resolved to demonstrate by a certain and undoubted course of argument, or to deduce from the very condition of human nature, not what is new and unheard of, but only such things as
agree best with practice. — Baruch Spinoza

When those of Jewish blood exhibit moral or intellectual superiority, genius or special talent, we feel pride in them, even if they have abjured the faith like Spinoza, Marx, Disraeli or Heine. Despite the meditations of pundits or the decrees of council, our own instincts and acts, and those of others, have defined for us the term 'Jew.' — Louis D. Brandeis

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

Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head's [Right Whale] expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years. — Herman Melville

By emotion I mean the modifications of the body, whereby the active power of the said body is increased or diminished, aided or constrained, and also the ideas of such modifications. — Baruch Spinoza

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

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward. — Baruch Spinoza

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

God is the efficient cause not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence.
Corr. Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner. — Baruch Spinoza

Zen is completely free from the fetters of old dogmas, dead creeds, and conventions of stereotyped past, that check the development of a religious faith and prevent the discovery of a new truth. Zen needs no Inquisition. It never compelled nor will compel the compromise of a Galileo or a Descartes. No excommunication of a Spinoza or the burning of a Bruno is possible for Zen. — Kaiten Nukariya

The terms good and bad indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking or notions, which we form from the comparison of things one with another. Thus one and the same thing can be at the same time good, bad, and indifferent. For instance, music is good for him that is melancholy, bad for him that mourns; for him that is deaf; it is neither good nor bad. — 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

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

Superstitious persons, who know better how to rail at vice than how to teach virtue, and who strive not to guide men by reason, but so to restrain them that they would rather escape evil than love virtue, have no other aim but to make others as wretched as themselves. Wherefore it is nothing wonderful, if they be generally troublesome and odious to their fellow man. — Baruch Spinoza

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear. — 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

[Believers] are but triflers who, when they cannot explain a thing, run back to the will of God; this is, truly, a ridiculous way of expressing ignorance. — Baruch Spinoza

I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza ... I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason. — Albert Einstein

The real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment which they are unable to tyrannize over. — Baruch Spinoza

Desire is the essence of a man. — Baruch Spinoza

The ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. [He] falls in love or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter, or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes — T. S. Eliot

What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness. — Baruch Spinoza

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

Self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue. — Baruch Spinoza