Top 200 Baruch Spinoza Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.”

— Baruch Spinoza

152. “God is a thing that thinks.”

— Baruch Spinoza

153. “Pride is over-estimation of oneself by reason of self-love.”

— Baruch Spinoza

154. “He whose honor depends on the opinion of the mob must day by day strive with the greatest anxiety, act and scheme in order to retain his reputation. For the mob is varied and inconsistent, and therefore if a reputation is not carefully preserved it dies quickly.”

— Baruch Spinoza

155. “Everyone is by absolute natural right the master of his own thoughts, and thus utter failure will attend any attempt in a commonwealth to force men to speak only as prescribed by the sovereign despite their different and opposing opinions.”

— Baruch Spinoza

156. “Hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love: and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it...”

— Baruch Spinoza

157. “In regard to intellect and true virtue, every nation is on a par with the rest, and God has not in these respects chosen one people rather than another.”

— Baruch Spinoza

158. “I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes and solids.”

— Baruch Spinoza

159. “He who would distinguish the true from the false must have an adequate idea of what is true and false.”

— Baruch Spinoza

160. “Even more, in the created thing, is a perfection that she exists; since the greatest of all imperfections is, not to exist.”

— Baruch Spinoza

161. “Nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition.”

— Baruch Spinoza

162. “If anyone conceives, that an object of his love joins itself to another with closer bonds of friendship than he himself has attained to, he will be affected with hatred towards the loved object and with envy towards his rival.”

— Baruch Spinoza

163. “Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.”

— Baruch Spinoza

164. “Things are not more or less perfect, according as they delight or offend human senses, or according as they are serviceable or repugnant to mankind.”

— Baruch Spinoza

165. “He who has a true idea, knows at that same time that he has a true idea, nor can he doubt concerning the truth of the thing.”

— Baruch Spinoza

166. “Superstitious persons, who know better how to rail at vice than how to teach virtue, and who strive not to guide men by reason, but so to restrain them that they would rather escape evil than love virtue, have no other aim but to make others as wretched as themselves. Wherefore it is nothing wonderful, if they be generally troublesome and odious to their fellow man.”

— Baruch Spinoza

167. “The good which every man, who follows after virtue, desires for himself he will also desire for other men...”

— Baruch Spinoza

168. “What can be more calamitous than that men should be regarded as enemies and put to death, not for any crime or misdeed, but for being of independent mind?”

— Baruch Spinoza

169. “In a democratic state nobody transfers his natural right to another so completely that thereafter he is not to be consulted; he transfers it to the majority of the entire community of which he is part. In this way all men remain equal, as they were before in a state of nature.”

— Baruch Spinoza

170. “Falsity consists in the privation of knowledge, which inadequate, fragmentary, or confused ideas involve.”

— Baruch Spinoza

171. “The superstitious, who know how to reprove vices rather than how to teach virtues, and who strive, not to lead people by reason, but to restrain them by fear in such a way that they flee what is bad rather than love the virtues, simply intend all other people to be as miserable as they are, and so it is not surprising that they are for the most part irksome and hateful to human beings.”

— Baruch Spinoza

172. “If Scripture were to describe the downfall of an empire in the style adopted by political historians, the common people would not be stirred.”

— Baruch Spinoza

173. “For though men be ignorant, yet they are men.”

— Baruch Spinoza

174. “Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.”

— Baruch Spinoza

175. “He who has a true idea simultaneously knows that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt of the truth of the thing perceived.”

— Baruch Spinoza

176. “A passion seizes to be a passion as soon as we form a clear idea of it.”

— Baruch Spinoza

177. “Statesman are suspected of plotting against mankind, rather than consulting their interests, and are esteemed more crafty than learned.”

— Baruch Spinoza

178. “Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs, which are an inalienable right, are regarded as criminal.”

— Baruch Spinoza

179. “In so far as we understand, we can desire nothing but that which must be, nor, in an absolute sense, can we find contentment in anything but truth.”

— Baruch Spinoza

180. “There can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope.”

— Baruch Spinoza

181. “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.”

— Baruch Spinoza

182. “The more we understand individual things, the more we understand God.”

— Baruch Spinoza

183. “The real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment which they are unable to tyrannize over.”

— Baruch Spinoza

184. “Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.”

— Baruch Spinoza

185. “By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in.”

— Baruch Spinoza

186. “God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.”

— Baruch Spinoza

187. “Those who are governed by reason desire nothing for themselves which they do not desire for the rest of humankind.”

— Baruch Spinoza

188. “So they will pursue their questions from cause to cause, till at last you take refuge in the will of God – in other words, the sanctuary of ignorance.”

— Baruch Spinoza

189. “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

190. “Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.”

— Baruch Spinoza

191. “Vulgus semper aeque miserum manet.”

— Baruch Spinoza

192. “Superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear.”

— Baruch Spinoza

193. “We must take care not to admit as true anything, which is only probable. For when one falsity has been let in, infinite others follow.”

— Baruch Spinoza

194. “Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility.”

— Baruch Spinoza

195. “Man can, indeed, act contrarily to the decrees of God, as far as they have been written like laws in the minds of ourselves or the prophets, but against that eternal decree of God, which is written in universal nature, and has regard to the course of nature as a whole, he can do nothing.”

— Baruch Spinoza

196. “Indulge yourself in pleasures only in so far as they are necessary for the preservation of health.”

— Baruch Spinoza

197. “Yet nature cannot be contravened, but preserves a fixed and immutable order.”

— Baruch Spinoza

198. “Anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic.”

— Baruch Spinoza

199. “By emotion I mean the modifications of the body, whereby the active power of the said body is increased or diminished, aided or constrained, and also the ideas of such modifications.”

— Baruch Spinoza

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

— Baruch Spinoza