Quotes from Baruch Spinoza

Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.

We can always get along better by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and remorse. Harmful are these, and evil.

The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition.

A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.

The eternal wisdom of God ... has shown itself forth in all things, but chiefly in the mind of man, and most of all in Jesus Christ.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.

Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them.

Men who are ruled by reason desire nothing for themselves which they would not wish for all mankind.

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.

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

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.

Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are determined.

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.

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

The virtue of a free man appears equally great in refusing to face difficulties as in overcoming them.

Desire is the essence of a man.

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

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

All laws which can be broken without any injury to another, are counted but a laughing-stock, and are so far from bridling the desires and lusts of men, that on the contrary they stimulate them.

The proper study of a wise man is not how to die but how to live.

Desire is the very essence of man

Only free men are thoroughly grateful one to another.