Baruch Spinoza citations célèbres
On the Improvement of the Understanding
On the Improvement of the Understanding
Baruch Spinoza: Citations en anglais
“The order and connection of the thought is identical to with the order and connection of the things.”
Ordo et connexio idearum idem est ac ordo et connexio rerum
Part II, Prop. VII
Ethics (1677)
Albert Einstein, in response to the telegrammed question of New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein in (24 April 1929) ; he later expanded on his comments about Spinoza's and his own ideas on religion elsewhere : "I can understand your aversion to the use of the term "religion" to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza … I have not found a better expression than "religious" for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason." — as quoted in Einstein : Science and Religion by Arnold V. Lesikar
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Selected works, Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy (London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1880)
Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy? (cited in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://www.iep.utm.edu/d/deleuze.htm#SH3b)
A - F, Gilles Deleuze
Charles Hartshorne, in Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (1964) ISBN 020800498X p. 348
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David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
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Statement after his excommunication from Jewish society, attributed by Lucas, in The Oldest Biography of Spinoza (1970) by A. Wolf; also in Spinoza: A Life (1999) by Steven Nadler
“This endeavour to do a thing or leave it undone, solely in order to please men, we call ambition, especially when we so eagerly endeavour to please the vulgar, that we do or omit certain things to our own or another's hurt : in other cases it is generally called kindliness.”
Hic conatus aliquid agendi et etiam omittendi ea sola de causa ut hominibus placeamus, vocatur ambitio præsertim quando adeo impense vulgo placere conamur ut cum nostro aut alterius damno quædam agamus vel omittamus; alias humanitas appellari solet.
Part III, Prop. XXIX
Ethics (1677)
Source: Political Treatise (1677), Ch. 11, Of Democracy
I, 1
On the Improvement of the Understanding (1662)
Spinoza, Correspondence, 146, Letter xix
“All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.”
Tota felicitas aut infelicitas in hoc solo sita est; videlicet in qualitate obiecti, cui adhaeremus amore.
I, 9; translation by W. Hale White (Revised by Amelia Hutchison Stirling)
On the Improvement of the Understanding (1662)
“Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage: for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.”
Humanam impotentiam in moderandis et coercendis affectibus servitutem voco; homo enim affectibus obnoxius sui juris non est sed fortunæ in cujus potestate ita est ut sæpe coactus sit quanquam meliora sibi videat, deteriora tamen sequi.
Part IV, Preface; translation by R. H. M. Elwes
Ethics (1677)
“The dominant feature in his character was his devotion to the pursuit of truth”
A. Wolf, from the introduction to Spinoza's Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being (1910)
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David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
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George Santayana, in "On My Friendly Critics", in Soliloquies in England (1922)
“My purpose is to explain, not the meaning of words, but the nature of things.”
Meum institutum non est verborum significationem sed rerum naturam explicare
Ethics (1677)
Bertrand Russell, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz https://archive.org/details/cu31924052172271 (1900) Ch. 1, Leibniz's Premisses, p, 5.
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“Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also.”
As quoted in The Story of Philosophy (1933) by Will Durant, p. 176
“…from the perspective of the eternal.”
sub specie aeternitatis
Part V, Prop. XXIII, Scholium
Ethics (1677)
Wie lieb ich diesen edlen Mann
Mehr als ich mit Worten sagen kann.
Doch fürcht' ich, dass er bleibt allein
Mit seinem strahlenen Heiligenschein.
Albert Einstein, first stanza in his poem "Zu Spinozas Ethik" (1920), written in admiration of Spinoza, as quoted in Einstein and Religion (1999) by Max Jammer "Einstein's Poem on Spinoza" (with scans of original German manuscript) at Leiden Institute of Physics, Leiden University http://www.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl/history/Einsteins_poem/Spinoza.html
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“Of a commonwealth, whose subjects are but hindered by terror from taking arms, it should rather be said, that it is free from war, than that it has peace. 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. Besides, that commonwealth, whose peace depends on the sluggishness of its subjects, that are led about like sheep, to learn but slavery, may more properly be called a desert than a commonwealth.”
Civitas, cuius subditi metu territi arma non capiunt, potius dicenda est, quod sine bello sit, quam quod pacem habeat. Pax enim non belli privatio, sed virtus est, quae ex animi fortitudine oritur; est namque obsequium constans voluntas id exsequendi, quod ex communi civitatis decreto fieri debet. Illa praeterea civitas, cuius pax a subditorum inertia pendet, qui scilicet veluti pecora ducuntur, ut tantum servire discant, rectius solitudo, quam civitas dici potest.
Liberally rendered in A Natural History of Peace (1996) by Thomas Gregor as:
"Peace is not an absence of war; it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice."
Source: Political Treatise (1677), Ch. 5, Of the Best State of a Dominion
“Spinoza is, for me, the prince of philosophers.”
Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (cited in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://www.iep.utm.edu/d/deleuze.htm#SH3b)
“I pass, at length, to the third and perfectly absolute dominion, which we call democracy.”
Source: Political Treatise (1677), Ch. 11, Of Democracy
Source: Political Treatise (1677), Ch. 10, Of Aristocracy, Conclusion
Variant translation : Laws which can be broken without any wrong to one's neighbor are but a laughing-stoke ; and, so far from such laws restraining the appetites and lusts of mankind, they rather heighten them.
Variant: All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men, that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men's thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden... He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it.
Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961)
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Will Durant, beginning with a quote of Sir Frederick Pollock in Life and Philosophy of Spinoza (1899)
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“A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.”
Homo liber de nulla re minus, quam de morte cogitat, et ejus sapientia non mortis, sed vitae meditatio est.
Part IV, Prop. LXVII
Ethics (1677)
“Truth is a standard both of itself and of falsity”
veritas norma sui et falsi est
Part II, Prop. XLIII, Scholium
Ethics (1677)
Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
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