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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.

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
Truth
Says
Circle
Circumference
Many
Lines
Application
Nomenclature
Something
Names
Drawn
Mathematicians
Things
Understanding
Circles
Consist
Men
Wrong
Errors
Mathematician
Time
Understand
Merely
Science
Equal
Understands
Else
Events
Centre

More quotes by Baruch Spinoza

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[Believers] are but triflers who, when they cannot explain a thing, run back to the will of God this is, truly, a ridiculous way of expressing ignorance.
Baruch Spinoza
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Measure, time and number are nothing but modes of thought or rather of imagination.
Baruch Spinoza
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Be not astonished at new ideas for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.
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Love is nothing but joy accompanied with the idea of an eternal cause.
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Men are especially intolerant of serving and being ruled by, their equals.
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A man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present.
Baruch Spinoza
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If a man had begun to hate an object of his love, so that love is thoroughly destroyed, he will, causes being equal, regard it with more hatred than if he had never loved it, and his hatred will be in proportion to the strength of his former love.
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He, who knows how to distinguish between true and false, must have an adequate idea of true and false.
Baruch Spinoza
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We must take care not to admit as true anything, which is only probable. For when one falsity has been let in, infinite others follow.
Baruch Spinoza
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Yet nature cannot be contravened, but preserves a fixed and immutable order.
Baruch Spinoza
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As men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another to scoff, I conclude ... that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits.
Baruch Spinoza
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In the mind there is no absolute or free will but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity.
Baruch Spinoza
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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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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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In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another.
Baruch Spinoza
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Faith is nothing but obedience and piety.
Baruch Spinoza
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There is no fear without some hope, and no hope without some fear.
Baruch Spinoza
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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.
Baruch Spinoza
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I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes and solids.
Baruch Spinoza
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If facts conflict with a theory, either the theory must be changed or the facts.
Baruch Spinoza