Baruch Spinoza quotes
Dutch rationalist excommunicated from his community. His Ethics offers a geometry of substance, freedom, and joy as the increase of being.
7 passages across 4 themes. More on Baruch Spinoza.
On freedom
“The free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.”
“He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.”
On joy
“Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also.”
“All laws which can be broken without any injury to another, are counted but a laughing-stock, and are so far from bridling the desires and lusts of men, that on the contrary they stimulate them.”
On action
“I have resolved to demonstrate by a certain and undoubted course of argument, or to deduce from the very condition of human nature, not what is new and unheard of, but only such things as agree best with practice.”
“I pass, at length, to the third and perfectly absolute dominion, which we call democracy.”
On peace
“Peace is not an absence of war; it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence.”