Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Baruch Spinoza

Image
Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear. [They are the two sides of a coin, so learning how to manage fear through learning, understanding, rationality, controlled imagination, preparation, mental focus (including distraction) and a gratitude attitude is very helpful.]
Baruch Spinoza
Image
Indulge yourself in pleasures only in so far as they are necessary for the preservation of health.
Baruch Spinoza
Image
Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.
Baruch Spinoza
Image
Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them.
Baruch Spinoza
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.
Baruch Spinoza
Image
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
Image
I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.
Baruch Spinoza
Image
God is a thing that thinks.
Baruch Spinoza
Image
self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.
Baruch Spinoza
Image
If we conceive that anyone loves, desires, or hates anything which we ourselves love, desire, or hate, we shall thereupon regard the thing in question with more steadfast love, etc. On the contrary, if we think that anyone shrinks from something that we love, we shall undergo vacillation of the soul.
Baruch Spinoza
Image
Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.
Baruch Spinoza
Image
It is usually the case with most men that their nature is so constituted that they pity those who fare badly and envy those who fare well.
Baruch Spinoza
Image
Let unswerving integrity be your watchword.
Baruch Spinoza
Image
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.
Baruch Spinoza
Image
Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.
Baruch Spinoza
Image
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
Image
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
Image
All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.
Baruch Spinoza