110+ Baruch Spinoza Quotes On God, Death And Rationalist

Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Sephardi origin. He is considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy and, by virtue of his magnum opus, the Ethics, one of the definitive ethicists of the early modern period. He is known for his postulations on the unity of mind and body, attributing both with the attribute of substance and rejecting any notion of Cartesian dualism. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Baruch Spinoza on god, death, life.

Top 10 Baruch Spinoza Quotes

1. If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.
2. No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.
3. Nothing in nature is by chance... Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.
4. The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.
5. The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.
6. I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.
7. What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness.
8. 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.
9. Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them.
10. We feel and know that we are eternal.

Baruch Spinoza Short Quotes

• Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
• If facts conflict with a theory, either the theory must be changed or the facts.
• Freedom is self-determination.
• Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.
• A good thing which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil.
• There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.
• Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.
• Faith is nothing but obedience and piety.
• Big fish eat small fish with as much right as they have power.
• The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

Baruch Spinoza Quotes About God

The holy word of God is on everyone's lips...but...we see almost everyone presenting their own versions of God's word, with the sole purpose of using religion as a pretext for making others think as they do. — Baruch Spinoza

God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things. — Baruch Spinoza

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived. — Baruch Spinoza

Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. — Baruch Spinoza

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. — Baruch Spinoza

I believe that a triangle, if it could speak, would say that God is eminently triangular, and a circle that the divine nature is eminently circular; and thus would every one ascribe his own attributes to God. — Baruch Spinoza

God is the efficient cause not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence. Corr. Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner. — Baruch Spinoza

God and all attributes of God are eternal. — Baruch Spinoza

In regard to intellect and true virtue, every nation is on a par with the rest, and God has not in these respects chosen one people rather than another. — Baruch Spinoza

Man can, indeed, act contrarily to the decrees of God, as far as they have been written like laws in the minds of ourselves or the prophets, but against that eternal decree of God, which is written in universal nature, and has regard to the course of nature as a whole, he can do nothing. — Baruch Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza Quotes About Life

In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth. — Baruch Spinoza

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

He who lives according to the guidance of reason strives as much as possible to repay the hatred, anger, or contempt of others towards himself with love or generosity. ...hatred is increased by reciprocal hatred, and, on the other hand, can be extinguished by love, so that hatred passes into love. — Baruch Spinoza

In so far as men are influenced by envy or any kind of hatred, one towards another, they are at variance, and are therefore to be feared in proportion, as they are more powerful than their fellows. Yet minds are not conquered by force, but by love and high-mindedness. — Baruch Spinoza

We can always get along better by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and remorse...we should strive to keep worry from our life. — Baruch Spinoza

Simply from the fact that we have regarded a thing with the emotion of pleasure or pain, though that thing be not the efficient cause of the emotion, we can either love or hate it. — Baruch Spinoza

If anyone conceives, that an object of his love joins itself to another with closer bonds of friendship than he himself has attained to, he will be affected with hatred towards the loved object and with envy towards his rival. — Baruch Spinoza

If a man had begun to hate an object of his love, so that love is thoroughly destroyed, he will, causes being equal, regard it with more hatred than if he had never loved it, and his hatred will be in proportion to the strength of his former love. — Baruch Spinoza

If anyone conceives that he is loved by another, and believes that he has given no cause for such love, he will love that other in return. — Baruch Spinoza

The greater emotion with which we conceive a loved object to be affected toward us, the greater will be our complacency. — Baruch Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza Quotes About Love

Schisms do not originate in a love of truth, which is a source of courtesy and gentleness, but rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy. — Baruch Spinoza

Everyone endeavors as much as possible to make others love what he loves, and to hate what he hates... This effort to make everyone approve what we love or hate is in truth ambition, and so we see that each person by nature desires that other persons should live according to his way of thinking. — Baruch Spinoza

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

Pride is over-estimation of oneself by reason of self-love. — Baruch Spinoza

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 — Baruch Spinoza

A free man, who lives among ignorant people, tries as much as he can to refuse their benefits. .. He who lives under the guidance of reason endeavours as much as possible to repay his fellow's hatred, rage, contempt, etc. with love and nobleness. — Baruch Spinoza

Minds are not conquered by force, but by love and high-mindedness. — Baruch Spinoza

Love or hatred towards a thing, which we conceive to be free, must, other things being similar, be greater than if it were felt towards a thing acting by necessity. — Baruch Spinoza

If we love something similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring it about that it should love us in return. — Baruch Spinoza

Hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love: and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it. — Baruch Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza Quotes About Ethics

Let unswerving integrity be your watchword. — Baruch Spinoza

No one doubts but that we imagine time from the very fact that we imagine other bodies to be moved slower or faster or equally fast. We are accustomed to determine duration by the aid of some measure of motion. — Baruch Spinoza

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. — Baruch Spinoza

He who has a true idea, knows at that same time that he has a true idea, nor can he doubt concerning the truth of the thing. — Baruch Spinoza

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. — Baruch Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza Quotes About Nature

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd. — Baruch Spinoza

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. — Baruch Spinoza

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. — Baruch Spinoza

Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also. — Baruch Spinoza

Anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic. — Baruch Spinoza

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

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. — Baruch Spinoza

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. — Baruch Spinoza

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow. — Baruch Spinoza

I have resolved to demonstrate by a certain and undoubted course of argument, or to deduce from the very condition of human nature, not what is new and unheard of, but only such things as agree best with practice. — Baruch Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza Quotes About Reason

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason. — Baruch Spinoza

I call him free who is led solely by reason. — Baruch Spinoza

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

In proportion as we endeavor to live according to the guidance of reason, shall we strive as much as possible to depend less on hope, to liberate ourselves from fear, to rule fortune, and to direct our actions by the sure counsels of reason. — Baruch Spinoza

True virtue is life under the direction of reason. — Baruch Spinoza

Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion. — Baruch Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza Quotes About Free

In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity. — Baruch Spinoza

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

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. — Baruch Spinoza

In the mind there is no absolute or free will. — Baruch Spinoza

The real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment which they are unable to tyrannize over. — Baruch Spinoza

The more a government strives to curtail freedom of speech, the more obstinately is it resisted; not indeed by the avaricious, ... but by those whom good education, sound morality, and virtue have rendered more free. — Baruch Spinoza

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

Only free men are thoroughly grateful one to another. — Baruch Spinoza

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

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

Baruch Spinoza Famous Quotes And Sayings

The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure....you are above everything distressing. — Baruch Spinoza

Laws which prescribe what everyone must believe, and forbid men to say or write anything against this or that opinion, are often passed to gratify, or rather to appease the anger of those who cannot abide independent minds. — Baruch Spinoza

The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation. — Baruch Spinoza

For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from force of character: for obedience is the constant will to execute what, by the general decree of the commonwealth, ought to be done. — Baruch Spinoza

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. — Baruch Spinoza

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. — Baruch Spinoza

We must take care not to admit as true anything, which is only probable. For when one falsity has been let in, infinite others follow. — Baruch Spinoza

Statesman are suspected of plotting against mankind, rather than consulting their interests, and are esteemed more crafty than learned. — Baruch Spinoza

The mind has greater power over the emotions, and is less subject thereto, insofar as it understands all things to be necessary. — Baruch Spinoza

He, who knows how to distinguish between true and false, must have an adequate idea of true and false. — Baruch Spinoza

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. — Baruch Spinoza

Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole. — Baruch Spinoza

Of all the things that are beyond my power, I value nothing more highly than to be allowed the honor of entering into bonds of friendship with people who sincerely love truth. For, of things beyond our power, I believe there is nothing in the world which we can love with tranquility except such men. — Baruch Spinoza

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

Ambition is the immoderate desire for honor. — Baruch Spinoza

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear. — Baruch Spinoza

True piety for the universe but no time for religions made for man's convenience. — Baruch Spinoza

Laws directed against opinions affect the generous-minded rather than the wicked, and are adapted less for coercing criminals than for irritating the upright. — Baruch Spinoza

If we conceive that anyone loves, desires, or hates anything which we ourselves love, desire, or hate, we shall thereupon regard the thing in question with more steadfast love, etc. On the contrary, if we think that anyone shrinks from something that we love, we shall undergo vacillation of the soul. — Baruch Spinoza

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

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. — Baruch Spinoza

Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage : for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune : so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse. — Baruch Spinoza

We strive to further the occurrence of whatever we imagine will lead to Joy, and to avert or destroy what we imagine is contrary to it, or will lead to Sadness. — Baruch Spinoza

I have tried sedulously not to laugh at the acts of man, nor to lament them, nor to detest them, but to understand them. — Baruch Spinoza

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward. — Baruch Spinoza

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear. [They are the two sides of a coin, so learning how to manage fear through learning, understanding, rationality, controlled imagination, preparation, mental focus (including distraction) and a gratitude attitude is very helpful.] — Baruch Spinoza

self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue. — Baruch Spinoza

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 inconsistent, and therefore if a reputation is not carefully preserved it dies quickly. — Baruch Spinoza

No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand. — Baruch Spinoza

Indulge yourself in pleasures only in so far as they are necessary for the preservation of health. — Baruch Spinoza

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. — Baruch Spinoza

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself. — Baruch Spinoza

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

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. — Baruch Spinoza

True knowledge of good and evil as we possess is merely abstract or general, and the judgment which we pass on the order of things and the connection of causes, with a view to determining what is good or bad for us in the present, is rather imaginary than real. — Baruch Spinoza

Will and intellect are one and the same thing. — Baruch Spinoza

Ceremonies are no aid to blessedness. — Baruch Spinoza

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

Men will find that they can ... avoid far more easily the perils which beset them on all sides by united action. — Baruch Spinoza

According as each has been educated, so he repents of or glories in his actions. — Baruch Spinoza

Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens. — Baruch Spinoza

As men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another to scoff, I conclude ... that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits. — Baruch Spinoza

I should attempt to treat human vice and folly geometrically... the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from the necessity and efficacy of nature... I shall, therefore, treat the nature and strength of the emotion in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids. — Baruch Spinoza

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

A man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present. — Baruch Spinoza

Life Lessons by Baruch Spinoza

1. Baruch Spinoza taught that the key to living a meaningful life is to strive for understanding and knowledge. He believed that by understanding the world around us, we can learn to appreciate the beauty of life and find joy in the present moment.
2. According to Spinoza, we should strive to live in harmony with nature and to be guided by reason rather than emotion. He also emphasized the importance of living with integrity and taking responsibility for our actions.
3. Spinoza believed that by cultivating a sense of self-awareness and understanding our place in the world, we can find peace and contentment in life. He encouraged us to live life with purpose and to strive for greater understanding of our place in the universe.