True virtue is life under the direction of reason.
Baruch Spinoza
Will and intellect are one and the same thing.
Baruch Spinoza
The endeavor to understand is the first and only
basis of virtue.
Baruch Spinoza
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
Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.
Baruch Spinoza
All things excellent are as difficult as they are
rare.
Baruch Spinoza
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a
state of mind, a disposition for benevolence,
confidence, justice.
Baruch Spinoza
I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to
weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand
them.
Baruch Spinoza
If you want the present to be different from the
past, study the past.
Baruch Spinoza
Nothing exists
from whose nature some effect does not follow.
Baruch Spinoza
The highest
activity a human being can attain is learning for
understanding, because to understand is to be free.
Baruch Spinoza
Those who are believed to be most abject and humble
are usually most ambitious and envious.
Baruch Spinoza
Fear cannot be
without hope nor hope without fear.
Baruch Spinoza
He alone is free
who lives with free consent under the entire
guidance of reason.
Baruch Spinoza
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.
Baruch Spinoza
Do not weep; do
not wax indignant. Understand.
Baruch Spinoza
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
The greatest
pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest
ignorance of one's self.
Baruch Spinoza
To give aid to
every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of
every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society
as a whole.
Baruch Spinoza
Whatsoever is, is
in God, and without God nothing can be, or be
conceived.
Baruch Spinoza
God is the
indwelling and not the transient cause of all
things.
Baruch Spinoza
Freedom is
absolutely necessary for the progress in science and
the liberal arts.
Baruch Spinoza
All happiness or
unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the
object to which we are attached by love.
Baruch Spinoza
I call him free
who is led solely by reason.
Baruch Spinoza
None are more
taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be
the first and are not.
Baruch Spinoza
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
