Baruch Spinoza Quotes on Politics
Baruch Spinoza was a 17th-century Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish descent, regarded as one of the leading rationalists of the early modern period. This page collects quotes attributed to Baruch Spinoza on the topic of politics, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
-
Attributed to Baruch Spinoza:
“Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.”
-
“[Spinoza] this pure soul, this great realist, the first human being to attempt to become a citizen of the world. . . this down-to-earth passion.”
G - L | Karl Jaspers , to Hannah Arendt , 4 August 1949, letter 91 in Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers Correspondence, edited by Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992) -
“He was in a certain sense the first Zionist of the last three hundred years, [...] Through keen insight into Jewish and world history he prophesied the rebirth of the State of Israel .”
G - L | David Ben-Gurion , 1953. As quoted in Daniel B. Schwartz, The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image . (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012) -
“All laws which can be broken without any injury to another, are counted but a laughing-stock, and are so far from bridling the desires and lusts of men, that on the contrary they stimulate them.”
Political Treatise(1677) | Ch. 10, Of Aristocracy, Conclusion Variant translation : Laws which can be broken without any wrong to one's neighbor are but a laughing-stoke ; and, so far from such laws restraining the appetites an -
“David A. Duquette, Hegel's History of Philosophy: New Interpretations . (State University of New York Press, 2002)”
A - F -
“Daniel Barenboim , " The Purpose of the State is Freedom " (DanielBarenboim.com, December 2003)”
Daniel Barenboim -
“The piety of philosophers is theory, pure intuition of the divinity, calm and gay in silent solitude. Spinoza is the ideal of the species. The religious state of the poet is more passionate and more communicative.”
S - Z | Friedrich Schlegel , Philosophical Fragments (1798)