Quotes from Benedict Spinoza

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

Avarice, ambition, lust, etc., are nothing but species of madness.

He that can carp in the most eloquent or acute manner at the weakness of the human mind is held by his fellows as almost divine.

He who would distinguish the true from the false must have an adequate idea of what is true and false.

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

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

Men will find that they can prepare with mutual aid far more easily what they need, and avoid far more easily the perils which beset them on all sides, by united forces.

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

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.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues.

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.

He whose honor depends on the opinion of the mob must day by day strive with the greatest anxiety, act and scheme in order to retain his reputation. For the mob is varied and inconstant, and therefore if a reputation is not carefully preserved it dies quickly.

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

Man is a social animal.

It therefore comes to pass that everyone is fond of relating his own exploits and displaying the strength both of his body and his mind, and that men are on this account a nuisance one to the other.

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.

All excellent things are as difficult as they are rare.

God and all the attributes of God are eternal.

I refer those actions which work out the good of the agent to courage, and those which work out the good of others to nobility. Therefore temperance, sobriety, and presence of mind in danger, etc., are species of courage; but modesty, clemency, etc., are species of nobility.

God is a thing that thinks.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain, by fear, nor to exact obedience, but contrariwise, to free every man from fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other words, to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury to himself or others.