"The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free."
“Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also.”
“In regard to intellect and true virtue, every nation is on a par with the rest, and God has not in these respects chosen one people rather than another.”
“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.”
“I am of opinion that the revelation of God can only be established by the wisdom of the doctrine, not by miracles, or in other words by ignorance.”
“They seem to have conceived man in nature as a kingdom within a kingdom. For they believe that man disturbs rather than follows the course of nature, and that he has absolute power in his actions, and is not determined in the by anything else than himself. They attribute the cause of human weakness and inconstancy not to the ordinary power of nature, but to some defect or other in human nature, wherefore they deplore, ridicule, despise, or what is most common of all, abuse it: and he that can carp in the most eloquent or acute manner at the weakness of the human mind is held by his fellows as almost divine.”
“In regard to intellect and true virtue, every nation is on a par with the rest, and God has not in these respects chosen one people rather than another.”
“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.”
“I am of opinion that the revelation of God can only be established by the wisdom of the doctrine, not by miracles, or in other words by ignorance.”
“They seem to have conceived man in nature as a kingdom within a kingdom. For they believe that man disturbs rather than follows the course of nature, and that he has absolute power in his actions, and is not determined in the by anything else than himself. They attribute the cause of human weakness and inconstancy not to the ordinary power of nature, but to some defect or other in human nature, wherefore they deplore, ridicule, despise, or what is most common of all, abuse it: and he that can carp in the most eloquent or acute manner at the weakness of the human mind is held by his fellows as almost divine.”
"Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived."
"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."
"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 called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused."
"God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things."
"Desire is the very essence of man."
"Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad."
"Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad."
"Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd."
"I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion."
"Desire is the essence of a man."
"Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself."
"Peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice."
"Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts."
"Happiness is a virtue, not its reward."
"I call him free who is led solely by reason."
"I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them."
"I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them."
"If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past."
"One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf."
"Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself."
"Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause."
"The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue."
"The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self."
"The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak."
"There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope."
"Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many."
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