Baruch Spinoza Quotes

On admitting what you actually want instead of what you should want:

Desire is the very essence of man.

On expecting good actions to pay off before you'll do them:

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.

On refusing to hope because you might be disappointed:

There can be no hope without fear, nor fear without hope.

On expecting a meaningful career change to be easy:

All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

On judging someone before hearing them out:

The effort to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

On dismissing the small details of daily life as meaningless:

The more we understand particular things, the more we understand God.

On loving someone only if they love you back the same way:

He who loves God cannot endeavor that God should love him in return.

On assuming your choices were not shaped by things outside your control:

Men believe themselves free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.

On assuming a small compromise now will not matter later:

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

Deciding whether to respond to a family feud with more anger or with warmth:

Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.

Trying to understand why a particular person affects you the way they do:

Love is nothing but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause.

Deciding how much space to give a health scare in how you plan your days:

A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.

Deciding how far to go out of your way to help someone in need:

Man is a God to man.

Checking whether confidence has tipped into arrogance before a big decision:

Pride is pleasure springing from a man's thinking too highly of himself.

On writing off a family member instead of trying to understand them:

I have made it my constant endeavor not to mock, lament, or curse human actions, but to understand them.

Deciding whether a truce with a rival is real peace or just a pause:

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

Weighing a job offer at a company that controls too much of how you think:

The purpose of the state is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to enable them to develop their minds and bodies in security.