The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.
No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.
If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.
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.
The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.
What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.
Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.
Nothing in nature is by chance... Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.
Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.
The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.
The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition.
Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.
The holy word of God is on everyone's lips...but...we see almost everyone presenting their own versions of God's word, with the sole purpose of using religion as a pretext for making others think as they do.
When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.
The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.
He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.
Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.
Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.
Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them.
A good thing which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil.
God is not He who is, but That which is.
Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.
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.
In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity.
Big fish eat small fish with as much right as they have power.
We must take care not to admit as true anything, which is only probable. For when one falsity has been let in, infinite others follow.
Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.
Nature has no goal in view, and final causes are only human imaginings.
We feel and know that we are eternal.
Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
Indulge yourself in pleasures only in so far as they are necessary for the preservation of health.
All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
[Believers] are but triflers who, when they cannot explain a thing, run back to the will of God; this is, truly, a ridiculous way of expressing ignorance.
Let unswerving integrity be your watchword.
I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.
Sadness diminishes a man's powers
Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.
What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness.
The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.
Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.
Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.
Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also.
Minds are not conquered by force, but by love and high-mindedness.
He, who knows how to distinguish between true and false, must have an adequate idea of true and false.
Freedom is self-determination.
He who loves God cannot endeavor that God should love him in return.
Laws which prescribe what everyone must believe, and forbid men to say or write anything against this or that opinion, are often passed to gratify, or rather to appease the anger of those who cannot abide independent minds.
Further conceive, I beg, that a stone, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavoring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such a stone, being conscious merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.
Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.
. . . to know the order of nature, and regard the universe as orderly is the highest function of the mind.
To understand something is to be delivered of it.
He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.
To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.
The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation.
the ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain by fear, nor to exact obedience, but to free every man from fear that he may live in all possible security... In fact the true aim of government is liberty.
Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are determined.
Superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear.
If facts conflict with a theory, either the theory must be changed or the facts.
The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.
Men who are ruled by reason desire nothing for themselves which they would not wish for all mankind.
Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.
Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.
The eternal wisdom of God ... has shown itself forth in all things, but chiefly in the mind of man, and most of all in Jesus Christ.
I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.
Laws which can be broken without any wrong to one's neighbor are a laughing-stock; and such laws, instead of restraining the appetites and lusts of mankind, serve rather to heighten them. Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata [we always resist prohibitions, and yearn for what is denied us].
A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.
Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.
I can control my passions and emotions if I can understand their nature
We are so constituted by Nature that we easily believe the things we hope for, but believe only with difficulty those we fear, and that we regard such things more or less highly than is just. This is the source of the superstitions by which men everywhere are troubled. For the rest, I don
Pride is over-estimation of oneself by reason of self-love.
Only free men are thoroughly grateful one to another.
The terms good and bad 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 one with 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 that mourns; for him that is deaf; it is neither good nor bad.
Speculation, like nature, abhors a vacuum.
Everything in nature is a cause from which there flows some effect.
Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.
For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from force of character: for obedience is the constant will to execute what, by the general decree of the commonwealth, ought to be done.
No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.
He who lives according to the guidance of reason strives as much as possible to repay the hatred, anger, or contempt of others towards himself with love or generosity. ...hatred is increased by reciprocal hatred, and, on the other hand, can be extinguished by love, so that hatred passes into love.
He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them.
In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.
God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.
The greatest secret of monarchic rule...is to keep men deceived and to cloak in the specious name of religion the fear by which they must be checked, so that they will fight for slavery as they would for salvation, and will think it not shameful, but a most honorable achievement, to give their life and blood that one man may have a ground for boasting.
I believe that a triangle, if it could speak, would say that God is eminently triangular, and a circle that the divine nature is eminently circular; and thus would every one ascribe his own attributes to God.
All is One (Nature, God)
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 sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues.
Everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find.
Everyone endeavors as much as possible to make others love what he loves, and to hate what he hates... This effort to make everyone approve what we love or hate is in truth ambition, and so we see that each person by nature desires that other persons should live according to his way of thinking.
The mind has greater power over the emotions, and is less subject thereto, insofar as it understands all things to be necessary.
True virtue is life under the direction of reason.
I call him free who is led solely by reason.
Faith is nothing but obedience and piety.
The more intelligible a thing is, the more easily it is retained in the memory, and counterwise, the less intelligible it is, the more easily we forget it.
Of all the things that are beyond my power, I value nothing more highly than to be allowed the honor of entering into bonds of friendship with people who sincerely love truth. For, of things beyond our power, I believe there is nothing in the world which we can love with tranquility except such men.
Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself; nor do we delight in happiness because we restrain from our lusts; but on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore we are able to restrain them.
Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.
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.
All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.
If anyone conceives that he is loved by another, and believes that he has given no cause for such love, he will love that other in return.
One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.
Whatsoever is, is in God.
He whose honor depends on the opinion of the mob must day by day strive with the greatest anxiety, act and scheme in order to retain his reputation. For the mob is varied and inconsistent, and therefore if a reputation is not carefully preserved it dies quickly.
True piety for the universe but no time for religions made for man's convenience.
It is usually the case with most men that their nature is so constituted that they pity those who fare badly and envy those who fare well.
The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed along with the body, but something of it remains, which is eternal.
Reality and perfection are synonymous.
Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men.
So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long as he is determined not to do it; and consequently so long as it is impossible to him that he should do it.
He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfully
Ceremonies are no aid to blessedness.
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.
If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune.
In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible ; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another.
The greatest good is the knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole nature.
In the mind there is no absolute or free will.
None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.
Laws directed against opinions affect the generous-minded rather than the wicked, and are adapted less for coercing criminals than for irritating the upright.
I have tried sedulously not to laugh at the acts of man, nor to lament them, nor to detest them, but to understand them.
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.
If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.
Statesman are suspected of plotting against mankind, rather than consulting their interests, and are esteemed more crafty than learned.
Schisms do not originate in a love of truth, which is a source of courtesy and gentleness, but rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy.
In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.
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.
...The body is affected by the image of the thing, in the same way as if the thing were actually present.
God is a thing that thinks.
I saw that all things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save insofar as the mind was affected by them.
Everyone has as much right as he has might.
Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things.
The less the mind understands and the more things it perceives, the greater its power of feigning is; and the more things it understands, the more that power is diminished.
There is no fear without some hope, and no hope without some fear.
Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's; but under nature everything belongs to all.
.... we are a part of nature as a whole, whose order we follow.
The mind can only imagine anything, or remember what is past, while the body endures.
The virtue of a free man appears equally great in refusing to face difficulties as in overcoming them.
It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.
Measure, time and number are nothing but modes of thought or rather of imagination.
Men will find that they can ... avoid far more easily the perils which beset them on all sides by united action.
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.
A miracle signifies nothing more than an event... the cause of which cannot be explained by another familiar instance, or.... which the narrator is unable to explain.
Desire is the essence of a man.
Men are especially intolerant of serving and being ruled by, their equals.
Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause, and hatred pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause.
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.
Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.
Ambition is the immoderate desire for honor.
A man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present.
To comprehend an idea, a person must simultaneously accept it as true. Conscious analysis - which, depending on the idea, may occur almost immediately or with considerable effort - allows the mind to reject what it intially accepted as fact.
God and all attributes of God are eternal.
After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.
Love or hatred towards a thing, which we conceive to be free, must, other things being similar, be greater than if it were felt towards a thing acting by necessity.
Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak.
Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.
He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.
We strive to further the occurrence of whatever we imagine will lead to Joy, and to avert or destroy what we imagine is contrary to it, or will lead to Sadness.
If we love something similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring it about that it should love us in return.
self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.
Whatever increases, decreases, limits or extends the body's power of action, increases decreases, limits, or extends the mind's power of action. And whatever increases, decreases, limits, or extends the mind's power of action, also increases, decreases, limits, or extends the body's power of action.
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.