Baruch Spinoza Quotes

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

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

…The body is affected by the image of the thing, in the same way as if the thing were actually present.

I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes and solids.

God is a thing that thinks.

He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfully

The multitude always strains after rarities and exceptions, and thinks little of the gifts of nature; so that, when prophecy is talked of, ordinary knowledge is not supposed to be included. Nevertheless it has as much right as any other to be called Divine.

Except God no substance can be granted or conceived. .. Everything, I say, is in God, and all things which are made, are made by the laws of the infinite nature of God, and necessarily follows from the necessity of his essence.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

The idea, which constitutes the actual being of the human mind, is not simple, but compounded of a great number of ideas.

Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.