100 Most Inspiring Quotes by Baruch Spinoza

Along with several other important thinkers, Baruch Spinoza laid the principles of the Enlightenment and of the contemporary ideas regarding the state and democracy. Without losing his spirituality, this 17th century Dutch philosopher of Sephardi/Portuguese origin expressed criticism in the way the Bible used to be interpreted by considering it should be analyzed as an important book of scientific knowledge instead of one of “truth by revelation”.

His work is also important for the adoption of a new human relationship of nature, as he believed that nature is everything. Nowadays, with regard to climate change and the questions posed by it, Spinoza’s quotes acquire a new meaning and can help to bring people and other living creatures closer together in nature.

Short Quotes by Baruch Spinoza

• We affirm and deny many things because the nature of words, not the nature of things, makes us to do so. Baruch Spinoza
• Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice. Baruch Spinoza
• The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free. Baruch Spinoza

• No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides. Baruch Spinoza
• Apply yourself with real energy to serious work. Baruch Spinoza
• If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past. Baruch Spinoza
• There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope. Baruch Spinoza
• I call him free who is led solely by reason. Baruch Spinoza
• Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused. Baruch Spinoza

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

• The superstitious know how to reproach people for their vices better than they know how to teach them virtues, and they strive, not to guide men by reason, but to restrain them by fear, so that they flee the evil rather than love virtues. Such people aim only to make others as wretched as they themselves are, so it is no wonder that they are generally burdensome and hateful to men. Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
• Nature offers nothing that can be called this man’s rather than another’s; but under nature everything belongs to all. Baruch Spinoza
• Will and intellect are one and the same thing. Baruch Spinoza
• Reason is no match for passion. Baruch Spinoza
• The less the mind understands and the more things it perceives, the greater its power of feigning is; and the more things it understands, the more that power is diminished. Baruch Spinoza

• Don’t cry and don’t rage. Understand. Baruch Spinoza
• The prideful love the company of parasites or flatterers, and hate the company of those of noble spirit. Baruch Spinoza
• Rarely do people live by the guidance of reason; instead, we are generally disposed to envy and mutual dislike. Baruch Spinoza
• Knowledge of evil is inadequate knowledge. Baruch Spinoza
• The real slave lives under the sway of pleasure and can neither see nor do what is for their own good. Baruch Spinoza
• Vice will exist so long as people exist. Baruch Spinoza

To understand is to be free. Spinoza

Spinoza Quotes about Truth

• Reason alone has asserted its claim to the realm of truth. Baruch Spinoza
• Truth more than anything else has the power to effect a close union between different sentiments and dispositions. Baruch Spinoza
• I am at a loss to understand the reasoning whereby it is considered that chance and necessity are not contraries. Baruch Spinoza
• A thing does not cease to be true because it is not accepted by many. Baruch Spinoza

We are so constituted by nature that we are ready to believe what we hope and reluctant to believe what we fear. Spinoza

• The investigation of Nature in general is the basis of philosophy. Baruch Spinoza
• In demonstrating the truths of Nature does not truth reveal its own self? Baruch Spinoza
• Reflection on the deceptiveness of the senses induces doubt. Baruch Spinoza
• Reason is in reality the light of the mind, without which the mind sees nothing but dreams and fantasies. Baruch Spinoza
• Truth becomes a casualty when in trials attention is paid not to justice or truth but to the extent of a person’s wealth. Baruch Spinoza
• Superstition is founded on ignorance. Baruch Spinoza

• Freedom is of the first importance in fostering the sciences and the arts. Baruch Spinoza
• Everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostility or servility when despotic power is in the hands of one or few. Baruch Spinoza
• We affirm and deny many things because the nature of words, not the nature of things, makes us to do so. Baruch Spinoza

Life Quotes by Baruch Spinoza

• Emotional distress and unhappiness have their origin mostly in excessive love toward a thing subject to considerable instability. Baruch Spinoza
• Healthy people take pleasure in food and thus enjoy a better life than those who eat to merely avoid death. Baruch Spinoza
• 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

• When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master. Baruch Spinoza
• Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare. Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
• I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them. Baruch Spinoza
• The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue. Baruch Spinoza
• Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself. Baruch Spinoza
• What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter. Baruch Spinoza
• He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason. Baruch Spinoza
• It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to another. Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
• 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

• Rarely do people live by the guidance of reason; instead, we are generally disposed to envy and mutual dislike. Baruch Spinoza
• The wise are richest by nobly despising riches instead of greedily pursuing them. Baruch Spinoza
• If we could live by reason as much as we are led by blind desire, all would be led by reason and would order their lives wisely. Baruch Spinoza
• People possess nothing more excellent than understanding, and can suffer no greater punishment than their folly. Baruch Spinoza
• People are quite incapable of distracting their minds from thinking of any other goods besides riches, honor, and sensual pleasure. Baruch Spinoza
• Evil is that which hinders a person’s capacity to perfect reason and to enjoy a rational life. Baruch Spinoza

We are correct to call inhuman those who are moved neither by reason nor by pity to render help to others. Spinoza

• Desire that arises from reason cannot be excessive. Baruch Spinoza
• If someone loves, desires, or hates something as we do, that very fact will cause us to love, desire, or hate it more. Baruch Spinoza

Inspirational Quotes by Baruch Spinoza

• The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is. Baruch Spinoza
• Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things. Baruch Spinoza

• 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. Baruch Spinoza
• In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity. Baruch Spinoza
• Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself; nor do we delight in happiness because we restrain from our lusts; but on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore we are able to restrain them. Baruch Spinoza
• Extreme pride, or self-abasement, indicates extreme weakness of spirit. Baruch Spinoza
• People under the guidance of reason seek nothing for themselves that they would not desire for the rest of humanity. Baruch Spinoza
• Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love. Hatred which is completely vanquished by love, passes into love; and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it. Baruch Spinoza
• Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
• Minds are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility. Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
• self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue. Baruch Spinoza
• Ignorance of true causes makes for total confusion. Baruch Spinoza
• The better part of us is in harmony with the order of the whole of Nature. Baruch Spinoza
• Conduct that brings about harmony is that which is related to justice, equity, and honorable dealing. Baruch Spinoza

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past. Baruch Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza Quotes about love

• All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love. Baruch Spinoza
• Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love. Baruch Spinoza
• Love is nothing but Joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause (Ethics, part III, proposition 13, scholium). Baruch Spinoza
• Marriage agrees with reason if its cause is not merely physical beauty but especially freedom of the spirit. Baruch Spinoza
• People’s hearts are conquered not by arms but by love and nobility. Baruch Spinoza
• Devotion is love toward one at whom we wonder. Baruch Spinoza

It is in the nature of reason to perceive things in the light of ETERNITY. Spinoza

Quotes by Baruch Spinoza about God, Eternity and the Universe

• Most people parade their own ideas as God’s Word, mainly to compel others to think like them under religious pretexts. Baruch Spinoza
• In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity. Baruch Spinoza
• We feel and experience ourselves to be eternal. Baruch Spinoza
• The mind of God is all the mentality that is scattered over space and time, the diffused consciousness that animates the world. Baruch Spinoza
• In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth. Baruch Spinoza, The Letters
• Outside Nature, which is infinite, there is, and can be, no being. Baruch Spinoza
• A miracle–either contrary to Nature or above Nature–is mere absurdity. Baruch Spinoza
• In the universe there is only one substance. Baruch Spinoza
• God does not exist for an end, and so God does not act for an end. Baruch Spinoza
• Nothing exists from whose nature an effect does not follow. Baruch Spinoza
• Everyone should be allowed freedom of judgment and the right to interpret the basic tenets of their faith as they think fit. Baruch Spinoza
• The eternal part of the mind is the intellect, through which alone we are said to be active. Baruch Spinoza

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace. Baruch Spinoza

Quotes by Baruch Spinoza about Democracy

• Only free people are truly grateful to one another. Baruch Spinoza
• In isolation no one has the strength to defend themselves and acquire the necessities of life. 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
• 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
• When all decisions are made by a few people who have only themselves to please, freedom and the common good are lost. Baruch Spinoza

The mind is passive only to the extent that it has inadequate or confused ideas. Spinoza

• The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain by fear, nor to exact obedience, but to free every man from fear that he may live in all possible security. In fact the true aim of government is liberty. Baruch Spinoza
• All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men’s thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden… He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it. Baruch Spinoza
• Those who take an oath by law will avoid perjury more if they swear by the welfare & freedom of the state instead of by God. Baruch Spinoza
• A society will be more secure, stable & less exposed to fortune, which is founded & governed mainly by people of wisdom and vigilance. Baruch Spinoza
• The free person never acts with deceit, but always with good faith. Baruch Spinoza
• Those who cannot manage themselves and their private affairs will far less be capable of caring for the public interest. Baruch Spinoza

In adversity there is no counsel so foolish absurd or vain which people will not follow. Spinoza

• The basic purpose of democracy is to keep people rational, as far as possible, in order to live in peace and harmony. Baruch Spinoza
• It is far better for the honest policies of a state to be open to enemies than for the guilty secrets of tyrants hidden from citizens. Baruch Spinoza
• States must necessarily be created so that all people–both rulers and ruled; willing and unwilling–will act for the common welfare. Baruch Spinoza
• An entire people will never transfer its rights to a few people or to one person if they can reach agreement among themselves. Baruch Spinoza

Read More about Baruch Spinoza on Wikipedia

You may also like:

List of Famous Confucius Quotes

Rumi Quotes to Help You Enjoy Life

Søren Kierkegaard Quotes

UNIQUE GIFT IDEAS

If you're looking for great presents for all budgets, we have done the work for you.
Click here for the best birthday gifts for friends and loved ones.

If you liked what you read, please share it. It really helps us a lot.

Tweet