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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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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
Wrong
Neighbor
Appetites
Rather
Serve
Yearn
Without
Laws
Prohibition
Always
Broken
Resist
Semper
Mankind
Appetite
Prohibitions
Laughing
Stock
Heighten
Instead
Denied
Lusts
Law
Lust
Restraining

More quotes by Baruch Spinoza

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Faith is nothing but obedience and piety.
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.
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He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.
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Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause, and hatred pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause.
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Except God no substance can be granted or conceived. .. Everything, I say, is in God, and all things which are made, are made by the laws of the infinite nature of God, and necessarily follows from the necessity of his essence.
Baruch Spinoza
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The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition.
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Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's but under nature everything belongs to all.
Baruch Spinoza
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The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed along with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal.
Baruch Spinoza
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Whatever increases, decreases, limits or extends the body's power of action, increases decreases, limits, or extends the mind's power of action. And whatever increases, decreases, limits, or extends the mind's power of action, also increases, decreases, limits, or extends the body's power of action.
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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Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.
Baruch Spinoza
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Man can, indeed, act contrarily to the decrees of God, as far as they have been written like laws in the minds of ourselves or the prophets, but against that eternal decree of God, which is written in universal nature, and has regard to the course of nature as a whole, he can do nothing.
Baruch Spinoza
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If we love something similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring it about that it should love us in return.
Baruch Spinoza
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A free man, who lives among ignorant people, tries as much as he can to refuse their benefits. .. He who lives under the guidance of reason endeavours as much as possible to repay his fellow's hatred, rage, contempt, etc. with love and nobleness.
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Laws which prescribe what everyone must believe, and forbid men to say or write anything against this or that opinion, are often passed to gratify, or rather to appease the anger of those who cannot abide independent minds.
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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The greatest good is the knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole nature.
Baruch Spinoza
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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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All is One (Nature, God)
Baruch Spinoza
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Men who are ruled by reason desire nothing for themselves which they would not wish for all mankind.
Baruch Spinoza