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 ….

[Believers] are but triflers who, when they cannot explain a thing, run back to the will of God; this is, truly, a ridiculous way of expressing ignor….

Whatever increases, decreases, limits or extends the body's power of action, increases decreases, limits, or extends the mind's power of action. And ….

Everyone has as much right as he has might..

The terms good and bad indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking or notions, which we form from….

The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition..

It is sure that those are most desirous of honour or glory who cry out loudest of its abuse and the vanity of the world..

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion..

Of all the things that are beyond my power, I value nothing more highly than to be allowed the honor of entering into bonds of friendship with people….

The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self..

If we conceive that anyone loves, desires, or hates anything which we ourselves love, desire, or hate, we shall thereupon regard the thing in questio….

If the way which I have pointed out as leading to this result (i.e., power over the emotions by which the wise man surpasses the ignorant man) seems ….

The more we understand individual things, the more we understand God..

He who lives according to the guidance of reason strives as much as possible to repay the hatred, anger, or contempt of others towards himself with l….

Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love..

Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things. For if a man says that the lines which are drawn from the ce….

Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which th….

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 th….

Simply from the fact that we have regarded a thing with the emotion of pleasure or pain, though that thing be not the efficient cause of the emotion,….

The real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment which they are unable to tyrannize over..

A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life..