Baruch (Benedict de) 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 (Benedict de) 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 (Benedict de) Spinoza

Desire is the essence of a man.

— Baruch (Benedict de) 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 (Benedict de) Spinoza

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

— Baruch (Benedict de) 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 (Benedict de) Spinoza

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

— Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza

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

— Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza

The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.

— Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza

We feel and know that we are eternal.

— Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza

Music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good or bad to the deaf.

— Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

— Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza

All excellent things are as difficult as they are rare.

— Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza

Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.

— Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

— Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

— Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza

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

— Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza

Will and intellect are one and the same.

— Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza

There is no individual thing in nature, which is more useful to man, than a man who lives in obedience to reason.

— Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

— Baruch (Benedict de) Spinoza