Baruch Spinoza

Copy Image

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free

Copy Image

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace

Copy Image

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

Copy Image

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them

Copy Image

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. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved