Baruch Spinoza Quotes

A woman holds dreadful power over a man who is in love with her but she should realize that the quality and force of his love is the index of his potential contempt and hatred.

It's part of our nature. As much as I love (brother and guitarist Eddie), if you put us in a room with no one else for 15 minutes, we'd be at each other's throats.

I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike.

People love to hate other people.

In life, particularly in public life, psychology is more powerful than logic.

I started to fight with the men. I raised my voice, and they started listening to me.

Life on earth is a hand-to-hand mortal combat... between the law of love and the law of hate.

Contempt is the only asymmetrical facial expression, so it's easy to spot once you're aware of its signs. One researcher has successfully tracked it in couples as a predictor of divorce. When someone is angry at you, you've still got traction with them, but when they display contempt, you've been dismissed.

I have seen something of the project of M. de St. Pierre, for maintaining a perpetual peace in Europe. I am reminded of a device in a cemetery, with the words: Pax perpetua ; for the dead do not fight any longer: but the living are of another humor; and the most powerful do not respect tribunals at all.

Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.

Love and hunger rule the world. Ergo, to rule the world, one must master love and hunger.

War forgets peace. Peace forgives war. War is the death of the life human. Peace is the birth of the Life Divine. Our vital passions want war. Our psychic emotions desire peace.

It's much easier to be at peace than it is to hate somebody. It's much easier to love somebody than to fight with them.

It is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved? It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.

All disasters stem from us. Why is there a war? Perhaps because now and then I might be inclined to snap at my neighbour. Because I and my neighbour and everyone else do not have enough love. Yet we could fight war and all its excrescences by releasing each day, the love which is shackled inside us, and giving it a chance to live.

I succeeded in using my charms like a weapon; I learned to play with other's hearts and to master my own desires.

He who lives according to the guidance of reason strives as much as possible to repay the hatred, anger, or contempt of others towards himself with love or generosity. ...hatred is increased by reciprocal hatred, and, on the other hand, can be extinguished by love, so that hatred passes into love.

Never be put off by your target's anger; it is a sure sign of enslavement.

If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.

I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please - a little less love, and a little more common decency."

Do you think you can cure the hatreds and the maladjustments of the world by hanging them? You simply show your ignorance and your hate when you say it. You may here and there cure hatred with love and understanding, but you can only add fuel to the flames by cruelty and hate.

And pity--people who inspire it in you are actually very powerful people. To get someone else to take care of you, to feel sorry for you--that takes a lot of strength, smarts, manipulation. Very powerful people.

The powerful have no monopoly on greed, hatred, fear, or ignorance.

Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal.