Authors — Quotes

Baruch Spinoza Quotes: 10

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.
The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.
I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.
I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.
In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.
The Letters
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.
Ethics
He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason
Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens.
Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
Ethics
I saw that all the things I feared and which feared me had nothing good or bad in them save in so far as the mind was affected by them.
On the Improvement of the Understanding