"The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free."
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Quote collection
Baruch Spinoza quotes (page 1 of 12)
223 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts."
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"If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past."
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"No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides."
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"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."
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"Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion."
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"The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is."
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"Nothing in nature is by chance... Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge."
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"Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined."
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"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."
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"The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak."
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"The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition."
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"I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them."
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"Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety."
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"What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter."
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"[Believers] are but triflers who, when they cannot explain a thing, run back to the will of God; this is, truly, a ridiculous way of expressing ignorance."
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"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."
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"I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion."
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"For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from force of character: for obedience is the constant will to execute what, by the general decree of the commonwealth, ought to be done."
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"The holy word of God is on everyone's lips...but...we see almost everyone presenting their own versions of God's word, with the sole purpose of using religion as a pretext for making others think as they do."
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