Baruch Spinoza
BARUCH SPINOZA  Macroknow Library
   

   
The Ethics.

" . . . Nature has no fixed goal and . . . all final causes are but figments of the human imagination."1a ARISTOTLE

"He who has a true idea knows at the same time that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt its truth."1b*

"In the mind there is no absolute, or free, will. The mind is determined to this or that volition by a cause, which is likewise determined by another cause, and this again by another, and so ad infinitum."1c* AUGUSTINE EINSTEIN

"If men were born free, they would form no conception of good and evil so long as they were free."1d* SOROS

"The free man never acts deceitfully, but always with good faith."1e* SOROS

"To act in absolute conformity with virtue is nothing else in us but to act, to live, to preserve one's own being (these three mean the same) under the guidance of reason, on the basis of seeking one's own advantage."1f* DARWIN RAND

" . . . [T]hose who know the true use of money set the limit of their wealth solely according to their needs, and live content with little."1g*

"Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself. . . "1h*


     
   

* Italics in the original.

1 Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). The Ethics. Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Selected Letters . Translated by Samuel Shirley. Edited, with Introductions, by Seymour Feldman. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1992.
a Appendix, Part I, at 59.
b Proposition 43, Part II, at 91.
c Proposition 48, Part II, at 95.
d Proposition 68, Part IV, at 192.
e Proposition 72, Part IV, at 194.
f Proposition 24, Part IV, at 166-167.
g Appendix, Part IV, at 199.
h Proposition 42, Part V, at 223.