Baruch Spinoza

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason

Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

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.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

It will be said that, although God__ law is inscribed in our hearts, Scripture is nevertheless the Word of God, and it is no more permissible to say of Scripture that it is mutilated and contaminated than to say this of God__ Word. In reply, I have to say that such objectors are carrying their piety too far, and are turning religion into superstition; indeed, instead of God__ Word they are beginning to worship likenesses and images, that is, paper and ink.

If Scripture were to describe the downfall of an empire in the style adopted by political historians, the common people would not be stirred.

Scriptural doctrine contains not abstruse speculation or philosophic reasoning, but very simple matters able to be understood by the most sluggish mind.

Everyone is by absolute natural right the master of his own thoughts, and thus utter failure will attend any attempt in a commonwealth to force men to speak only as prescribed by the sovereign despite their different and opposing opinions.

The purpose of the state is really freedom.

Falsity consists in the privation of knowledge, which inadequate, fragmentary, or confused ideas involve.

Every person should embrace those [dogmas] that he, being the best judge of himself, feels will do most to strengthen in him love of justice.

He who, while unacquainted with these writings, nevertheless knows by the natural light that there is a God having the attributes we have recounted, and who also pursues a true way of life, is altogether blessed.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.