Baruch Spinoza's Quotes

The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.

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.

How would it be possible if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labor be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long as he is determined not to do it; and consequently so long as it is impossible to him that he should do it.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

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

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

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.

Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.

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

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

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

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

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

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.

For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

We feel and know that we are eternal.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

All noble things are as difficult as they are rare.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

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.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.

Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.

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

Desire is the essence of a man.