So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long as he is determined not to do it; and consequently so long as it is impossible to him that he should do it.
quote by Baruch Spinoza
Added by Lucian Velea
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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.
quote by Baruch Spinoza
Added by Lucian Velea
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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.
quote by Baruch Spinoza
Added by Lucian Velea
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Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; neither do we rejoice therein, because we control our lusts, but contrariwise, because we rejoice therein, we are able to control our lusts.
Baruch Spinoza in The Ethics
Added by Lucian Velea
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How would it be possible if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labor be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
quote by Baruch Spinoza
Added by Lucian Velea
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Hatred can never be good. … Here, and in what follows, I mean by hatred only hatred towards men. … Envy, derision, contempt, anger, revenge, and other emotions attributable to hatred, or arising therefrom, are bad … Whatsoever we desire from motives of hatred is base, and in a State unjust.
quote by Baruch Spinoza
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The more a government strives to curtail freedom of speech, the more obstinately is it resisted; not indeed by the avaricious … but by those whom good education, sound morality, and virtue have rendered more free. Men in general are so constituted that there is nothing they will endure with so little patience as that views which they believe to be true should be counted crimes against the laws. … Under such circumstances they do not think it disgraceful, but most honorable, to hold the laws in abhorrence, and to refrain from no action against the government.
Baruch Spinoza in Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain, by fear, nor to exact obedience, but contrariwise, to free every man from fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other words, to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury to himself or others. No, the object of government is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to enable them to develop their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger, or deceit, nor watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice. In fact, the true aim of government is liberty.
quote by Baruch Spinoza
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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