Baruch Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza , also known as Benedictus or Bento de Spinoza (1632 - 1677)

Dutch philosopher and lens maker.

Sourced

• As for the terms good and bad, they indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking, or notions which we form from the comparison of things with one another. Thus one and the same thing can be at the same time good, bad, and indifferent. For instance music is good for him that is melancholy, bad for him who mourns; for him who is deaf, it is neither good nor bad.
  • Source: Ethics, bk. IV

• As men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another to scoff, I conclude... that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits.
  • Source: A Theologico-Political Treatise

• Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner.
  • Source: Ethics, bk. I, prop. XXV

• He, who has a true idea, simultaneously knows that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt of the truth of the thing perceived.
  • Source: Ethics, bk. II, prop. XLIII,

• 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.
  • Source: Ethics, bk. V, prop. XLII

• "Ignorantia non est argumentum."
  • Translation: "Ignorance is no argument."
  • Source: Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata et in quinque parses distincta, Part 1, Addendum; Amsterdam, 1677.
  • Originally used to oppose traditional theological views that everything exists and is determined by divine intervention because no other plausible reason or explanation is seen.

• Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune’s greedily coveted favours, they are consequently for the most part, very prone to credulity.
  • Source: A Theologico-Political Treatise

• Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.
  • Source: Ethics, bk. I, prop. XXIX

• 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.
  • Source: Ethics, bk. I, prop. XXXIII

• The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.
  • Source: Ethics, bk. II, prop. VII

• Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.
  • Source: Ethics, bk. I, prop. XV

See also

Truth

God