The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.
Baruch SpinozaRead
Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.
Interpretation
This quote expresses the idea that everything exists through God and that God's presence is essential for existence and understanding.
Baruch Spinoza's quote emphasizes the central role of God in the existence of all things. He asserts that nothing can exist or even be imagined without the divine presence, suggesting a pantheistic view where God is synonymous with the universe. This view challenges the notion of God as a distant creator, instead portraying the divine as immanent in every aspect of reality.
In practice
During a philosophy lecture on the nature of existence.
The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.
A man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present.
He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.
No one doubts but that we imagine time from the very fact that we imagine other bodies to be moved slower or faster or equally fast. We are accustomed to determine duration by the aid of some measure of motion.
Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear. [They are the two sides of a coin, so learning how to manage fear through learning, understanding, rationality, controlled imagination, preparation, mental focus (including distraction) and a gratitude attitude is very helpful.]
He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfully
I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.
Here, then, is what I wanted to tell you of my architecture. I created it with courage and idealism, but also with an awareness of the fact that what is important is life, friends and attempting to make this unjust world a better place in which to live.
So long ago, was it in a dream, was it just a dream?
We can't leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world's people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources.
Moral responsibility is what is lacking in a man when he demands it of a woman.
Who do I belong to? How come I mortgaged my being till I don't belong to myself? How come I sold my blood? And who now owns my indecisions, my hands, my private pain, my pride?
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