# Spinoza's most famous quotes

'Not to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand', 'Deus sive Natura' and 'All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare': Baruch Spinoza's most quoted lines, from the Ethics and the Theological-Political and Political treatises.

- 65 votes · 12 items
- Aug 26, 2021 · Leire García Gutiérrez
- https://even.best/en/l/4662/spinoza-s-most-famous-quotes

## Top 12

1. **God, or Nature.** (8 · ▲8 ▼0) — Ethics (1677), part IV, preface: 'Deus sive Natura'.
2. **I have taken care not to mock, lament or detest human actions, but to understand them.** (7 · ▲7 ▼0) — Political Treatise (1677), chapter I, 4.
3. **All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.** (5 · ▲5 ▼0) — Ethics (1677), last sentence.
4. **It is extremely rare for people to relate something simply as it happened, without adding anything of their own judgement.** (5 · ▲5 ▼0) — Theological-Political Treatise (1670), chapter VI.
5. **Desire is the very essence of man.** (4 · ▲5 ▼1) — Ethics, part III, definitions of the affects, I.
6. **A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — Ethics, part IV, proposition 67.
7. **He who repents of an action is doubly wretched and powerless.** (3 · ▲4 ▼1) — Ethics, part IV, proposition 54.
8. **The purpose of the state is, in reality, freedom.** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — Theological-Political Treatise (1670), chapter XX.
9. **There is as much difference between heads as between palates.** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — Quoted in Agustín Izquierdo's La filosofía contra la religión (2003).
10. **Joy is man's passage from a lesser to a greater perfection.** (2 · ▲4 ▼2) — Ethics, part III, definitions of the affects, II.
11. **The most violent state will be the one that denies each person the freedom to say and teach what they think.** (2 · ▲4 ▼2) — Theological-Political Treatise (1670), chapter XX.
12. **Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue born of strength of mind.** (1 · ▲4 ▼3) — Political Treatise (1677), chapter V, 4.

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