Quotations by Spinoza

A stone receives from an external cause that pushes it a certain quantity of motion... Now conceive that this stone, while it continues to move, thinks and knows that it is striving, as far as it can, to move. This stone, surely, since it is conscious only of its striving, will believe itself entirely free.

• On Freedom of the will, their position: Hard determinism98%

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.

• On The highest good, their position: Eudaimonism50%

Desire is the very essence of man, insofar as it is conceived as determined to do something by a given affection of itself.

• On Relation to desire, their position: Affirmation70%

He who loves God cannot strive that God should love him in return.

• On Nature of love, their position: Philia (friendship)60%

I have taken great care not to deride human actions, nor to bewail them, nor to detest them, but to understand them.

• On Relation to the past, their position: Amor fati93%

I shall treat human actions and appetites just as if it were a question of lines, planes, and bodies.

• On Status of emotions, their position: The primacy of reason70%

The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.

• On Status of knowledge

This kind of knowledge proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things.

• On Source of knowledge, their position: Rationalism93%

Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God.

• On Existence of God, their position: Theism75%