Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinozawas a Dutch philosopher of Sephardi/Portuguese origin. By laying the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism, including modern conceptions of the self and the universe, he came to be considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy...
NationalityDutch
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth24 November 1632
desire lines action
I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes and solids.
men desire tongue
Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.
men desire wish
Men who are ruled by reason desire nothing for themselves which they would not wish for all mankind.
desire
Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.
philosophical ambition desire
Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.
men desire tongue
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.
desire courtesy source
Schisms do not originate in a love of truth, which is a source of courtesy and gentleness, but rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy.
melancholy deaf realism
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.
vacuums speculation
Speculation, like nature, abhors a vacuum.
truth men circles
Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things. For if a man says that the lines which are drawn from the centre of the circle to the circumference are not equal, he understands by the circle, at all events for the time, something else than mathematicians understand by it.
philosophy views religion
Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.
integrity ethics
Let unswerving integrity be your watchword.
war philosophical character
Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.
philosophical virtue reason
True virtue is life under the direction of reason.