The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.
I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.
I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.
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.
Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility.
He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason
whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived
The good which every man, who follows after virtue, desires for himself he will also desire for other men…
Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens.
Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
Every person should embrace those [dogmas] that he, being the best judge of himself, feels will do most to strengthen in him love of justice.
He who, while unacquainted with these writings, nevertheless knows by the natural light that there is a God having the attributes we have recounted, and who also pursues a true way of life, is altogether blessed.
Falsity consists in the privation of knowledge, which inadequate, fragmentary, or confused ideas involve.
Scriptural doctrine contains not abstruse speculation or philosophic reasoning, but very simple matters able to be understood by the most sluggish mind.
If Scripture were to describe the downfall of an empire in the style adopted by political historians, the common people would not be stirred.
Everyone is by absolute natural right the master of his own thoughts, and thus utter failure will attend any attempt in a commonwealth to force men to speak only as prescribed by the sovereign despite their different and opposing opinions.
Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.
He who has a true idea simultaneously knows that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt of the truth of the thing perceived.
The order and connection of ideas in the same as the order and connection of things
The object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body
I saw that all the things I feared and which feared me had nothing good or bad in them save in so far as the mind was affected by them.
Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.
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.
When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.
Even more, in the created thing, is a perfection that she exists; since the greatest of all imperfections is, not to exist.
The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.
Nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition
men, in so far as they live in obedience to reason necessarily do only such things as are necessarily good for human nature, and consequently for each individual man.
those, who are believed to be most self—abased and humble, are generally in reality the most ambitious and envious
Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.
I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.
In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.
self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.
To be what we are and to become what we are capable of becoming is the only end of life.
There is no hope unmingled with fear and no fear unmingled with hope.
To be what we are and to become what we are capable of becoming is the only end of life.
There is no hope unmingled with fear and no fear unmingled with hope.
We can always get along better by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and remorse. Harmful are these and evil.
There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.
Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
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.
Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.
Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.
Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.
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.
All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.
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.
God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.
Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.
Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.
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.
The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.
He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.