Spinoza, Baruch

"Reason teaches us the need for union and common life; thus reason teaches us to live according to the rules of reason."

"There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope."

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

"The mind's power of thinking is proportional to the body's power of acting."

"Who can despise all things if he despises himself?"

"In the state of nature, the right of each is determined by his power."

"Inadequate ideas are the source of human bondage and suffering."

"The time and imagination of duration are infinite or indefinite."

"He acts according to divine power who acts from the laws of his own nature."

"Sadness is the transition to a lesser perfection."

"Pleasure is the transition to greater perfection."

"We strive to persevere in being."

"Knowledge of the first kind is imagination; knowledge of the second kind is reason; knowledge of the third kind is intuition."

"A man is as much affected with the image of a thing past or future as with the image of a thing present."

"The body is capable of very many things."

"God or Nature acts from the necessity of its own nature alone, and not compelled by any external cause."

"Whatever increases or diminishes the power of acting of our body, the idea of it increases or diminishes the power of thinking of our mind."

"Whoever lives without foes does not merely fail to exercise his strength; he also fails to strengthen it."

"The mind and body are one and the same thing, which is considered now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension."

"Absence of power is properly privation."

"Hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love."

"We endeavor to bring into existence whatever we imagine to follow from our power of acting."

"A man who is guided by reason is more free in a state or commonwealth than in solitude."

"He who properly understands that all things follow from necessity will find nothing worthy of hatred."

"Insofar as the mind perceives all things as necessary, it has a certain power of determining the emotions."

"The transition to a greater perfection is called pleasure."

"An idea of an existing body is necessarily true."

"Effort is the very essence of power."

"Those things which are common to all things and which are equally in a part as in a whole form only the foundations of our understanding."

"The laws of nature are always true and everywhere the same."