Spinoza

“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.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“If you want the future to be different from the present, study the past.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“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.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Do not weep. Do not wax indignant. Understand.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“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.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Spinoza in der europäischen Geistesgeschichte

“When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.”
― Baruch Spinoza