Baruch Spinoza Quotes About Desire

Quotes about: Desire

• Further conceive, I beg, that a stone, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavoring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such a stone, being conscious merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Believe, Moving, Men

• If we conceive that anyone loves, desires, or hates anything which we ourselves love, desire, or hate, we shall thereupon regard the thing in question with more steadfast love, etc. On the contrary, if we think that anyone shrinks from something that we love, we shall undergo vacillation of the soul.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Life, Hate, Thinking

  Baruch Spinoza (2014). “The Road to Inner Freedom: The Ethics”, p.22, Open Road Media

• Men who are ruled by reason desire nothing for themselves which they would not wish for all mankind.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Men, Wish, Desire

• Ambition is the immoderate desire for honor.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Philosophical, Ambition, Power

  "The Essential Spinoza: Ethics and Related Writings".

• Desire nothing for yourself, which you do not desire for others.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Inspirational, Desire

• Everyone endeavors as much as possible to make others love what he loves, and to hate what he hates... This effort to make everyone approve what we love or hate is in truth ambition, and so we see that each person by nature desires that other persons should live according to his way of thinking.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Hate, Ambition, Thinking

• Desire is the very essence of man

  Baruch Spinoza

  Philosophy, Men, Essence

  Baruch Spinoza (2006). “The Essential Spinoza: Ethics and Related Writings”, p.93, Hackett Publishing

• Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Men, Desire, Would Be

  "Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata" by Baruch Spinoza, Variant translation of Prop. 2: Note, 1677.

• Schisms do not originate in a love of truth, which is a source of courtesy and gentleness, but rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Desire, Courtesy, Schism

  "The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza" by Benedict de Spinoza, ch. 20, 1670.

• All laws which can be broken without any injury to another, are counted but a laughing-stock, and are so far from bridling the desires and lusts of men, that on the contrary they stimulate
  them.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Men, Law, Broken

  "Tractatus Politicus (TP)". Political paper by Baruch Spinoza, 1677.

• Desire is the essence of a man.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Men, Essence, Desire

• Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Men, Desire, Tongue

• I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes and solids.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Desire, Lines, Action

  Baruch Spinoza (1981). “Ethics”, p.93, Commodius Vicus

• 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 menб 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.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Passion, Men, Law

  "Tractatus Politicus (TP)". Political paper by Baruch Spinoza, 1677.

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