"The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free."
"As though God had turned away from the wise, and written his decrees, not in the mind of man but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the inspiration and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. Such is the unreason to which terror can drive mankind!"
8 likes
Source: Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Book by Baruch Spinoza, Preface, 1677.
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Baruch Spinoza
"The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts."
"If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past."
"No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides."
"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."
"Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion."