"In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth. […] we must take care not to admit as true anything, which is only probable. For when one falsity has been let in, infinite others follow." (Baruch Spinoza, [letter to Hugo Boxel], 1674)
"The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition." (Baruch Spinoza, "The Road to Inner Freedom: The Ethics", 1667)
"For the Mind feels those things that it conceives in understanding no less than those it has in the memory. For the eyes of the mind, by which it sees and observes things, are demonstrations [descriptions] themselves." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order", 1677)
"From a given determined cause an effect follows of necessity, and on the other hand, if no determined cause is granted, it is impossible that an effect should follow." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", 1677)
"I understand that to be CAUSE OF ITSELF (causa sui) whose essence involves existence and whose nature cannot be conceived unless existing." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", 1677)
"[...] in ordering our thoughts and images, we must always attend to those things which arc good in each thing so that in this way we are always determined to acting from an affect of joy." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", 1677)
"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 centre of the circle to the circumference are not equal, he understands by the circle, at all events for the time, something else than mathematicians understand by it." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", Book I, 1677)
"Men judge things according to the disposition of their minds, and had rather imagine things than understand them." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", Book I, 1677)
"Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", Book I, 1677)
"The idea of any mode in which the human body is affected by external bodies must involve the nature of the human body and at the same rime the nature of the external body." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", 1677)
"[...] in ordering our thoughts and images, we must always attend to those things which arc good in each thing so that in this way we are always determined to acting from an affect of joy." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", 1677)
"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 centre of the circle to the circumference are not equal, he understands by the circle, at all events for the time, something else than mathematicians understand by it." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", Book I, 1677)
"Men judge things according to the disposition of their minds, and had rather imagine things than understand them." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", Book I, 1677)
"Neither can the body determine the mind to think, nor the mind the body to move or to rest nor to anything else, if such there be." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", 1677)
"Nothing in Nature is random. […] A thing appears random only through the incompleteness of our knowledge." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", Book I, 1677)"Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", Book I, 1677)
"The idea of any mode in which the human body is affected by external bodies must involve the nature of the human body and at the same rime the nature of the external body." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", 1677)
"[...] that all men are born ignorant of the causes of things, and that all have a desire of acquiring what is useful; [...]" (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", 1677)
"The images of things are affections of the human body whose ideas represent external bodies as present to us. […] the affections of the human body whose ideas present external bodies as present to us, we shall call things, though they do not reproduce [external] figures of things. And when the mind regards bodies in this way, we shall say that it imagines." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", 1677)
"The images of things are affections of the human body whose ideas represent external bodies as present to us. […] the affections of the human body whose ideas present external bodies as present to us, we shall call things, though they do not reproduce [external] figures of things. And when the mind regards bodies in this way, we shall say that it imagines." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", 1677)
"Truly, as light manifests itself and darkness, thus truth is
the standard of itself and of error." (Baruch Spinoza, "Ethics", 1677)
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