“No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.”

Source: Theological-Political Treatise

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand." by Baruch Spinoza?
Baruch Spinoza photo
Baruch Spinoza 210
Dutch philosopher 1632–1677

Related quotes

Baruch Spinoza photo

“I have laboured carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate human actions, but to understand them”
Sedulo curavi, humanas actiones non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere; atque adeo humanos affectus, ut sunt amor, odium, ira, invidia, gloria, misericordia et reliquae animi commotiones non ut humanae naturae vitia, sed ut proprietates contemplatus sum, quae ad ipsam ita pertinent, ut ad naturam aëris aestus, frigus, tempestas, tonitru et alia huiusmodi, quae, tametsi incommoda sunt, necessaria tamen sunt, certasque habent causas, per quas eorum naturam intelligere conamur, et mens eorum vera contemplatione aeque gaudet, ac earum rerum cognitione, quae sensibus gratae sunt.

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Source: Political Treatise (1677), Ch. 1, Introduction; section 4
Context: I have laboured carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate human actions, but to understand them; and, to this end, I have looked upon passions, such as love, hatred, anger, envy, ambition, pity, and the other perturbations of the mind, not in the light of vices of human nature, but as properties, just as pertinent to it, as are heat, cold, storm, thunder, and the like to the nature of the atmosphere, which phenomena, though inconvenient, are yet necessary, and have fixed causes, by means of which we endeavour to understand their nature, and the mind has just as much pleasure in viewing them aright, as in knowing such things as flatter the senses

Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Matt Haig photo
Ambrose Bierce photo

“To be comic is merely to be playful, but wit is a serious matter. To laugh at it is to confess that you do not understand.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: Epigrams, p. 346

Eugene McCarthy photo

“Lament for an Aging Politician”

Eugene McCarthy (1916–2005) American politician

Poems

Bowe Bergdahl photo

“We make fun of them in front of their faces, and laugh at them for not understanding we are insulting them.”

Bowe Bergdahl (1986) American soldier captured by the Taliban in 2009 and released in 2014 as part of a prisoner swap

Last e-mail to parents (2009)

William Drummond of Hawthornden photo
Christopher Paolini photo

“The songs of the dead are the lamentations of the living.”

Opening line
Source: Eldest (2005)

Baruch Spinoza photo
Lev Vygotsky photo

“My intellect has been shaped under the sign of Spinoza's words, and it has tried not to be astounded, not to laugh, not to cry, but to understand.”

Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) Soviet psychologist

Vygotsky, in his dissertation thesis Psychology of Art [original in Russian]

Related topics