Quote #50

They seem to have conceived man in nature as a kingdom within a kingdom. For they believe that man disturbs rather than follows the course of nature, and that he has absolute power in his actions, and is not determined in the by anything else than himself. They attribute the cause of human weakness and inconstancy not to the ordinary power of nature, but to some defect or other in human nature, wherefore they deplore, ridicule, despise, or what is most common of all, abuse it: and he that can carp in the most eloquent or acute manner at the weakness of the human mind is held by his fellows as almost divine.

More from Baruch Spinoza

  1. Will and Intellect are one and the same thing.
  2. Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.
  3. He, who has a true idea, simultaneously knows that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt of the truth of the thing perceived.
  4. Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than suffici…
  5. He, who knows how to distinguish between true and false, must have an adequate idea of true and false.
  6. Pride is therefore pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.
  7. Mind and body are one and the same individual which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, and now under the attribute of extensi…
  8. So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long is he determined not to do it: and consequently, so long it is impossible…

All Baruch Spinoza quotes