If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.
– Baruch Spinoza
Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.
– Baruch Spinoza
Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.
– Baruch Spinoza
There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.
– Baruch Spinoza
The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.
– Baruch Spinoza
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
– Baruch 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 Spinoza
One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.
– Baruch Spinoza
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
Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.
– Baruch 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 Spinoza
I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.
– Baruch Spinoza
He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.
– Baruch Spinoza
Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.
– Baruch Spinoza
Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.
– Baruch Spinoza
Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.
– Baruch Spinoza
Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.
– Baruch Spinoza
All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.