Baruch Spinoza
Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.Collection: Jealousy
God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.Collection: God
I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.Collection: Religion
Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.Collection: War
There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.Collection: Hope
Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.Collection: Wisdom
If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.Collection: Men
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.Collection: Peace
Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.Collection: Motivational
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.Collection: Beauty
All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.Collection: Happiness
The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.Collection: Learning
Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.Collection: Nature
Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.Collection: Power
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.Collection: Power
Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.Collection: Happiness
Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.Collection: Science
He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.Collection: Alone
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.Collection: Peace
Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.Collection: Alone
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.Collection: Imagination
The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Music
All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.
The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.
Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.
The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.
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.
I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
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.
Desire is the very essence of man.
I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.
None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.
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.
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.
Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.
Will and intellect are one and the same thing.
Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.
I call him free who is led solely by reason.
Desire is the essence of a man.
Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.
We feel and know that we are eternal.
Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.
Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.
Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men.
True virtue is life under the direction of reason.
Nothing in nature is by chance... Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.Collection: Life
No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.Collection: Two Sides
The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.Collection: Truth