Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinozawas a Dutch philosopher of Sephardi/Portuguese origin. By laying the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism, including modern conceptions of the self and the universe, he came to be considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy...
NationalityDutch
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth24 November 1632
passion men law
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.
blessed thinking weak
Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.
reality men may
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.
philosophical pantheism without-god
Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.
happiness philosophical acceptance
Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
life thinking men
A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.
awareness immortality feels
We feel and know that we are eternal.
philosophical ambition desire
Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.
men desire tongue
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, and can moderate their desires more easily than their words.
facts conflict theory
If facts conflict with a theory, either the theory must be changed or the facts.
law laughing broken
Laws which can be broken without any wrong to one's neighbor are a laughing-stock; and such laws, instead of restraining the appetites and lusts of mankind, serve rather to heighten them. Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata [we always resist prohibitions, and yearn for what is denied us].
philosophical men evil
If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.
lust rewards able
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.
inspirational hoping-for-the-best without-hope
Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.