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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.

Baruch Spinoza

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Baruch Spinoza
Age: 44 †
Born: 1632
Born: November 24
Died: 1677
Died: February 21
Bible Translator
Grammarian
Instrument Maker
Linguist
Optical Instrument Maker
Philosopher
Political Scientist
Theologian
Translator
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Benedict de Spinoza
Baruch de Espinosa
Barukh Shpinozah
Benoît de Spinoza
Sbīnūzā
Ispīnūzā
Barukh Spinoza
Bento de Espinosa
Baruch d' Espinoza
Shpinozah
Baruch de Spinoza
Spinoza
Benoit de Spinoza
Benedictus De Spinoza
Benedictus Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Benedictus de Spinoza
Live
Notion
Everything
Instead
Must
Struggle
Giving
Alone
Real
Within
Sure
Less
Distressing
Give
Surrender

More quotes by Baruch Spinoza

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We are so constituted by Nature that we easily believe the things we hope for, but believe only with difficulty those we fear, and that we regard such things more or less highly than is just. This is the source of the superstitions by which men everywhere are troubled. For the rest, I don
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I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.
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The safest way for a state is to lay down the rule that religion is comprised solely in the exercise of charity and justice, and that the rights of rulers in sacred, no less than in secular matters, should merely have to do with actions, but that every man should think what he likes and say what he thinks.
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A miracle signifies nothing more than an event... the cause of which cannot be explained by another familiar instance, or.... which the narrator is unable to explain.
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Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.
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True virtue is life under the direction of reason.
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The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.
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For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from force of character: for obedience is the constant will to execute what, by the general decree of the commonwealth, ought to be done.
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He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfully
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The more intelligible a thing is, the more easily it is retained in the memory, and counterwise, the less intelligible it is, the more easily we forget it.
Baruch Spinoza
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I make this chief distinction between religion and superstition, that the latter is founded on ignorance, the former on knowledge.
Baruch Spinoza
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Desire is the very essence of man
Baruch Spinoza
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If facts conflict with a theory, either the theory must be changed or the facts.
Baruch Spinoza
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Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.
Baruch Spinoza
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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.
Baruch Spinoza
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Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage : for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune : so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.
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Laws which can be broken without any wrong to one's neighbor are a laughing-stock and such laws, instead of restraining the appetites and lusts of mankind, serve rather to heighten them. Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata [we always resist prohibitions, and yearn for what is denied us].
Baruch Spinoza
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Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.
Baruch Spinoza
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As though God had turned away from the wise, and written his decrees, not in the mind of man but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the inspiration and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. Such is the unreason to which terror can drive mankind!
Baruch Spinoza
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All the objects pursued by the multitude not only bring no remedy that tends to preserve our being, but even act as hinderances, causing the death not seldom of those who possess them, and always of those who are possessed by them.
Baruch Spinoza