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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.

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
Much
Name
Mercy
Men
Seeing
Master
Moderating
Names
Fortune
Infirmity
Lying
Worse
Checking
Often
Masters
Prey
Better
Lies
Bondage
Human
Follow
Compelled
Humans
Emotion
Emotions

More quotes by Baruch Spinoza

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The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.
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He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them.
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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.]
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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.
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Yet nature cannot be contravened, but preserves a fixed and immutable order.
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True knowledge of good and evil as we possess is merely abstract or general, and the judgment which we pass on the order of things and the connection of causes, with a view to determining what is good or bad for us in the present, is rather imaginary than real.
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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.
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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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Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.
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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.
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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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Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.
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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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Let unswerving integrity be your watchword.
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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Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.
Baruch Spinoza
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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
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Men are especially intolerant of serving and being ruled by, their equals.
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.
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There is no fear without some hope, and no hope without some fear.
Baruch Spinoza