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
real discovery mind
After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.
reality men giving
But if men would give heed to the nature of substance they would doubt less concerning the Proposition that Existence appertains to the nature of substance: rather they would reckon it an axiom above all others, and hold it among common opinions. For then by substance they would understand that which is in itself, and through itself is conceived, or rather that whose knowledge does not depend on the knowledge of any other thing.
evil good-things enjoy
A good thing which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil.
science numbers imagination
Measure, time and number are nothing but modes of thought or rather of imagination.
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.
doe influence effects
Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.
men law broken
All laws which can be broken without any injury to another, are counted but a laughing-stock, and are so far from bridling the desires and lusts of men, that on the contrary they stimulate them.
philosophical firsts virtue
The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.
religion atheism reason
I call him free who is led solely by reason.
men laughing understanding
I have tried sedulously not to laugh at the acts of man, nor to lament them, nor to detest them, but to understand them.
ideas true-and-false adequate
He who would distinguish the true from the false must have an adequate idea of what is true and false.
nature law understanding
Nothing comes to pass in nature, which can be set down to a flaw therein; for nature is always the same and everywhere one and thesame in her efficiency and power of action; that is, nature's laws and ordinances whereby all things come to pass and change from one form to another, are everywhere and always; so that there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely, through nature's universal laws and rules.
realizing difficult
Everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find.
might
Everyone has as much right as he has might.