Top 200 Baruch Spinoza Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “How would it be possible if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labor be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”

— Baruch Spinoza

52. “Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.”

— Baruch Spinoza

53. “The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.”

— Baruch Spinoza

54. “In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.”

— Baruch Spinoza

55. “Speculation, like nature, abhors a vacuum.”

— Baruch Spinoza

56. “God and all attributes of God are eternal.”

— Baruch Spinoza

57. “Let unswerving integrity be your watchword.”

— Baruch Spinoza

58. “Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.”

— Baruch Spinoza

59. “The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition.”

— Baruch Spinoza

60. “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

61. “Don’t cry and don’t rage. Understand.”

— Baruch Spinoza

62. “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

63. “I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy, I know that I understand the true philosophy.”

— Baruch Spinoza

64. “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

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

— Baruch Spinoza

66. “A free man thinks of death least of all things, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.”

— Baruch Spinoza

67. “The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.”

— Baruch Spinoza

68. “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

69. “Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.”

— Baruch Spinoza

70. “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

71. “Will and intellect are one and the same thing.”

— Baruch Spinoza

72. “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

73. “Everyone has as much right as he has might.”

— Baruch Spinoza

74. “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

75. “Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.”

— Baruch Spinoza

76. “The more intelligible a thing is, the more easily it is retained in the memory, and counterwise, the less intelligible it is, the more easily we forget it.”

— Baruch Spinoza

77. “A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.”

— Baruch Spinoza

78. “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

79. “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

80. “Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt.”

— Baruch Spinoza

81. “Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.”

— Baruch Spinoza

82. “We are so constituted by Nature that we easily believe the things we hope for, but believe only with difficulty those we fear, and that we regard such things more or less highly than is just. This is the source of the superstitions by which men everywhere are troubled. For the rest, I don.”

— Baruch Spinoza

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

— Baruch Spinoza

84. “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

85. “He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them.”

— Baruch Spinoza

86. “It is usually the case with most men that their nature is so constituted that they pity those who fare badly and envy those who fare well.”

— Baruch Spinoza

87. “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

88. “Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men’s natural abilities as to restrain them.”

— Baruch Spinoza

89. “Whatsoever is, is in God.”

— Baruch Spinoza

90. “Whatever increases, decreases, limits or extends the body’s power of action, increases decreases, limits, or extends the mind’s power of action. And whatever increases, decreases, limits, or extends the mind’s power of action, also increases, decreases, limits, or extends the body’s power of action.”

— Baruch Spinoza

91. “To understand something is to be delivered of it.”

— Baruch Spinoza

92. “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

93. “True piety for the universe but no time for religions made for man’s convenience.”

— Baruch Spinoza

94. “Minds are not conquered by force, but by love and high-mindedness.”

— Baruch Spinoza

95. “The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one’s self.”

— Baruch Spinoza

96. “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

97. “It is not possible that we should remember that we existed before our body, for our can bear no trace of such existence, neither can eternity be defined in terms of time or have any relation to time. But notwithstanding, we feel and know that we are eternal.”

— Baruch Spinoza

98. “Nature offers nothing that can be called this man’s rather than another’s; but under nature everything belongs to all.”

— Baruch Spinoza

99. “Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also.”

— Baruch Spinoza

100. “Only free men are thoroughly grateful one to another.”

— Baruch Spinoza