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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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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
Latter
Former
Ignorance
Superstition
Knowledge
Superstitions
Religion
Founded
Make
Chief
Chiefs
Distinction

More quotes by 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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Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them.
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The more a government strives to curtail freedom of speech, the more obstinately is it resisted not indeed by the avaricious, ... but by those whom good education, sound morality, and virtue have rendered more free.
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He, who knows how to distinguish between true and false, must have an adequate idea of true and false.
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Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.
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Ambition is the immoderate desire for honor.
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Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods.
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Men are especially intolerant of serving and being ruled by, their equals.
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Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.
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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!
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The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.
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Desire is the very essence of man
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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
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God is a thing that thinks.
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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.
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How would it be possible if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labor be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
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In proportion as we endeavor to live according to the guidance of reason, shall we strive as much as possible to depend less on hope, to liberate ourselves from fear, to rule fortune, and to direct our actions by the sure counsels of reason.
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If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.
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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Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's but under nature everything belongs to all.
Baruch Spinoza