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Baruch Spinoza

507 quotes

“He put forth his pantheism in a series of propositions and proofs—and what he hoped to prove was that mind and matter were merely two different manifestations of a single sacred Substance. It took a special kind of mind to deduce Nature’s divinity, step by step, from a simple set of axioms. Never has pantheism been proclaimed in such a punctilious fashion. Never before, and never since, has the world seen such a meticulous mystic.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kieran Fox, I Am a Part of Infinity. (New York: Basic Books, 2025.)
“But in his search for the divine, Spinoza delved down far below the roots of the Jewish religion. Deep in the depths of his own soul, he discovered the wellspring of the world, the secret source that sustained all things. Spinoza basked in the waters of this sacred spring until they saturated his whole being.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kieran Fox, I Am a Part of Infinity. (New York: Basic Books, 2025.)
“[Alberto Knox] Spinoza belonged to the Jewish community of Amsterdam, but he was excommunicated for heresy. Few philosophers in more recent times have been so blasphemed and so persecuted for their ideas as this man. It happened because he criticized the established religion. He believed that Christianity and Judaism were only kept alive by rigid dogma and outer ritual. He was the first to apply what we call a historico-critical interpretation of the Bible.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy. Translated from the Norwegian by Paulette Møller. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994)
“Can the seventeenth-century rationalist, who produced one of the most ambitious philosophical systems in the history of Western philosophy, be considered, by any stretch of interpretation, a Jewish thinker? Can he even be considered a Jew? Benedictus Spinoza is the greatest philosopher that the Jews ever produced, which adds a certain irony to his questionable Jewishness.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Rebecca Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity (New York: Schocken, 2006)
“One of the ideas that I play around with in the book [Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity] is tracing a possible path from Spinoza's influence in Amsterdam to the founding fathers of America, by way of John Locke, who spent time in Amsterdam a few years after Spinoza's death and fraternized with people of the same liberal persuasion as those in whom Spinoza had confided his ideas. No matter whether Madison and Jefferson really did read Spinoza (Spinoza was in Jefferson's library) they often sound just like him in their letters.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Rebecca Goldstein, in An Interview with Rebecca Goldstein, author of “Betraying Spinoza”, by Paul Comstock (California Literary Review, 30 March 2007)
“The attention that literary artists have lavished on Spinoza is remarkable. Writers have not only shaped their aesthetics by reflection on Spinoza, have not only inserted his views into the inner lives and dialogues of their characters, but have molded the man himself into a protagonist in their novels, poems, and plays. This last aspect of the literary fascination with Spinoza is particularly noteworthy. The person of Benedictus Spinoza has drawn, over the centuries, unusual attention, and not only from literary writers.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Rebecca Goldstein, in her article 'Literary Spinoza,'. In: The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza, edited by Michael Della Rocca (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)
“...But when it comes to the subject of the arts, Spinoza is oddly reticent. His failure to consider the aesthetic response—surely a profound facet of human experience—is all the stranger when one compares him, again, to Plato who directs as much conflicted pondering to the arts, particularly to poetry, as to erotic love.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Rebecca Goldstein, in her article 'Literary Spinoza,'. In: The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza, edited by Michael Della Rocca (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)
“Before I became a Marxist in 1924, I was in favor of pantheism, Zhuangzi, the Indian Buddhist thought of the Upanisads, and the Western philosopher Spinoza. I felt close to Johann W. Goethe also because of this inclination.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Guo Moruo [original in Chinese]. As quoted in Liu Jianmei (1967), Zhuangzi and Modern Chinese Literature
“I love our old Chuang-tzu because I love his pantheism, because he got a living by making straw shoes. I love the Dutchman Spinoza because I love his pantheism, because he got a living by grinding lenses. I love the Indian Kabir because I love his pantheism, because he got a living by knotting fishing-nets.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Guo Moruo, in his 1919 poem entitled Three Pantheists (San ge Fanshenlun Zhe) [original in Chinese]. As quoted in Liu Jianmei (1967), Zhuangzi and Modern Chinese Literature
“Previously, the world in my eyes is just a graphic drawing of death. Now it comes to life and becomes a subject as exquisite as rock quartz. I always like reading Zhuangzi, but I only appreciate his diction and ignore his meaning. I can't understand his meaning. At this moment, I understand him thoroughly. I know what “Tao” and “Hua” mean. From then on, I am led to Laozi, Confucius philosophy and especially Spinoza, so I found an all-directional solemn world.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Guo Moruo, 1982. As quoted in Yuan Li (2016), Study of Comparative Poetic Thought of Guo Moruo's Goddess [original in Chinese]
“Since I always like Zhuangzi and I am close to Tagore, I am greatly affected by the thought of pantheism. Hence, my works are close to works of the great philosopher of Europe Spinoza and poetry of German poet Goethe.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Guo Moruo, 1983. As quoted in Yuan Li (2016), Study of Comparative Poetic Thought of Guo Moruo's Goddess [original in Chinese]
“[Spinoza] — the deepest, most original thinker to emerge from our people from the end of the Bible to the birth of Einstein.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: David Ben-Gurion. As quoted in Daniel B. Schwartz (2011), An Icon for Iconoclasts: Spinoza and the Faith of Jewish Secularism (The Secular Issue, Association for Jewish Studies)
“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.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 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)
“I find no evidence that Jefferson read Spinoza, although his library does contain a copy of his works. Enlightenment thought is so saturated with Spinoza's ideas, however, that they could have reached Jefferson by innumerable routes.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Michael Hardt, Jefferson and Democracy (American Quarterly, Volume 59, Number 1, March 2007)
“In Spinoza, Hegel finds the fully developed “standpoint of substance” which cannot, however, be the highest standpoint because Being is not yet thought equally fundamentally and resolutely as thinking thinking itself. Being, as substance and substantiality, has not yet developed into the subject in its absolute subjectivity. Still, spinoza appeals always afresh to the whole thinking of German Idealism, and at the same time provokes its contradiction, because he lets thinking begin with the absolute.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference. Translated with an introduction by Joan Stambaugh. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1968)
“It is a pity that such a thinker as Spinoza had to leave our stage so soon. He could not live to see the enormous progress of science which would also have improved his system.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Johann Gottfried Herder, God, Some Conversations (1787) [original in German]
“...The teaching of Spinoza, the product of the Jewish genius and modern science [Wissenschaft], does not stand in contradiction with the Jewish teaching of unity - at most it may contradict its rationalistic and super-naturalistic approach.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Moses Hess, in his book The Holy History of Mankind (1837) [original in German]
“It is well known that Marx was familiar with Spinoza; indeed, he hand-copied whole passages of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus into his notebooks. Less clear is the significance of this fact, and the extent of Spinoza's influence on Marx's thought.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Eugene Holland, Spinoza and Marx (Cultural Logic, Volume 2, No 1, Fall 1998)
“I assert, that the doctrine of the immateriality, simplicity, and indivisibility of a thinking substance is a true atheism, and will serve to justify all those sentiments, for which Spinoza is so universally infamous. From this topic, I hope at least to reap one advantage, that my adversaries will not have any pretext to render the present doctrine odious by their declamations, when they see that they can be so easily retorted on them.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My dear Tyndall—I find that in the midst of my work in Edinburgh I omitted to write to De Vrij, so I have just sent him a letter expressing my pleasure in my being able to co-operate in any plan for doing honour to old Benedict, for whom I have a most special respect.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Thomas Henry Huxley, in his letter, 13 August 1875. Originally published in Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (London: Macmillan & Co., 1913)
“I have a great respect for the Nazarenism of Jesus — very little for later Christianity. But the only religion that appeals to me is prophetic Judaism. Add to it something from the best Stoics and something from Spinoza and something from Goethe, and there is a religion for men.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Thomas Henry Huxley, in his letter, 3 November 1892. Originally published in Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (London: Macmillan & Co., 1913)
“...Lately I have been re-reading Spinoza (much read and little understood in my youth). But that noblest of Jews must have planted no end of germs in my brains, for I see that what I have to say is in principle what he had to say, in modern language.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Thomas Henry Huxley, in his letter, 31 August 1894. Originally published in Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (London: Macmillan & Co., 1913)
“...The more a man knows about individual objects, the more he knows about God. Translating Spinoza's language into ours, we can say: The more a man knows about himself in relation to every kind of experience, the greater his chance of suddenly, one fine morning, realizing who in fact he is...”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...I depart tonight to spend a few days in Münster and am on that account very busy and distracted, else I would be writing more as to the possible advantages there might be in presenting to the public Spinoza's system in its true form and according to the intrinsic coherence of its parts. Its spectre has been haunting Germany for lo these many years, in all shapes and sizes and is regarded with reverence by believers and doubters alike. I am speaking not just of the petty-minded but of people with the finest minds.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, in his letter to Moses Mendelssohn, 21 April 1785 [original in German]
“[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.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 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)
“In 1676 Leibniz found a pretext to visit Spinoza in The Hague, having learned that Spinoza was at work on a philosophical treatise of great importance. Spinoza showed Leibniz the manuscript of the 'Ethics', and the two men discussed philosophy together over several days. Although there is no written record of their conversation, it seems likely that these discussions were among the most rewarding in the whole history of philosophy.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Nicholas Jolley, Leibniz (New York: Routledge, 2005)
“Surely, Spinoza's parallelism of attributes expressing differently but equivalently one and the same substance was a feat of genius and far superior to all other treatments of the problem at the time. Without interposing a synchronizing deity, as did others, it overcame Descartes' dualistic rift by a monistic reduction, yet retained the full severity of the disjunctions which that dualism had been designed to ensure.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...Synge was over here selling out and gave me his play to read–a play which is to be produced by the Irish Literary Theatre. I criticised it. Synge says I have a mind like Spinoza! (Spinoza was a great Hebrew philosopher)...”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: James Joyce, in a letter to his brother Stanislaus, 20 March 1903
“From Descartes and Malebranche onward, the metaphysical value of the “idea” or archetype steadily deteriorated. It became a “thought,” an internal condition of cognition, as clearly formulated by Spinoza: “By 'idea' I understand a conception of the mind which the mind forms by reason of its being a thinking thing.” Finally Kant reduced the archetypes to a limited number of categories of understanding.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is really very little of Machiavelli's one can accept or use in the contemporary world. The one thing I find interesting in Machiavelli is his estimate of the prince's will. Interesting, but not such as to influence me. If you want to know who has influenced me most, I'll answer with two philosophers' names: Spinoza and Kant. Which makes it all the more peculiar that you choose to associate me with Machiavelli.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Henry Kissinger, in interview with Oriana Fallaci, The New Republic (December 16, 1972)
“To Spinoza the Jew, it is declared two-hundred-fifty years after his death, from the heights of Mount Scopus, from our Temple-in-miniature (mikdash-ha-me'at)—the Hebrew University in Jerusalem: ...The herem (ban) is nullified! The sin of Judaism against you is removed and your offense against her atoned for! Our brother are you, our brother are you, our brother are you! (Ahinu ata, ahinu ata, ahinu ata!)”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Joseph Klausner, who was a committed Zionist, in a speech given at the Hebrew University in 1927
“You were one of the noblest, the most genuine people, who have ever walked this earth. And though both friend and foe know this, I don't think it unwarranted to verbally bear witness to it before your grave. For we know the world, we know Spinoza's fate. For the world could lay shadows around Nietzsche's memory as well. And therefore I conclude with the words: Peace to your ashes! Holy be thy name to all those to come!”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Heinrich Köselitz (a.k.a Peter Gast), in his closing words of the funeral oration he delivered in front of Friedrich Nietzsche's open grave in Röcken on August 28, 1900
“Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Bruno's ideas were widely imparted, borrowed, sounded ; almost never, though, with the name Giordano Bruno attached to them. Kepler once chided Galileo for omitting his debt to Bruno ; yet, we can discern Kepler's own indifference … Later generations would evoke Bruno's writings to the phrase, without quoting or acknowledging him. Recent scholarship on Spinoza, for example, cites Bruno's powerful exertion on his thought about infinity and on his style. Never does Spinoza cite Bruno by name.”
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Recorded in: Bill Kuhns, on the dangers to Spinoza and others, of citing Giordano Bruno as an influence, after his execution as a heretic, in "Giordano Bruno and Marshall McLuhan" in McLuhan Studies Issue 2 (1996)
“For years my mind was divided between Hegel and Spinoza. With youthful ingenuity I defended the dialectics of the former against Zeller, the founder of neo-Kantianism. The writings of Spinoza I knew by heart, and with loving understanding I gave expositions of his theory of affections and passions.”
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Recorded in: Antonio Labriola, Socialism and Philosophy (1897) [original in Italian]
“...For the present it would be a vain undertaking to try to make all these people understand this frank principle of communist ethics, a principle which declares that gratitude and admiration should come as a spontaneous gift from our fellow-beings. Many of them would not care to reach out for progress, were they sure of being told, in the words of Baruch Spinoza, that virtue is its own reward.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Antonio Labriola, Socialism and Philosophy (1897) [original in Italian]
“Regarding Spinoza, whom M. Arnauld has called the most impious and most dangerous man of this century, he was truly an Atheist, [i.e.,] he allowed absolutely no Providence dispensing rewards and punishments according to justice. ...The God he puts on parade is not like ours; he has no intellect or will. ...He fell well short of mastering the art of demonstration; he had only a mediocre knowledge of analysis and geometry; what he knew best was to make lenses for microscopes.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, letter to Count Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels (Aug. 14, 1683) in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe (1923-) II.ii. p. 535, as translated by Matthew Stewart, The Courtier an…
“Vygotsky studied the classical German philosophy on a professional level. In his student years began his acquaintance with the philosophy of Marxism, which he studied mainly using illegal editions. At this time was born Vygotsky's interest in the philosophy of Spinoza, who would remain his favorite thinker for the rest of his life.”
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Recorded in: A. N. Leontiev, On Vygotsky's Creative Development (Preface to Volume 3 of Vygotsky’s Collected Works in English) (1979)
“...I love Spinoza, because he, more than any other philosopher, led me to the complete conviction that certain things cannot be explained, that because of this one need not close one's eyes to them, but rather take them as one finds them.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in his Spinoza conversations with Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1780). Ref.: Vallée, Gérard (ed.): The Spinoza Conversations between Lessing and Jacobi: Text with Excerpts from the Ensuing Controve…
“If I should name myself after anyone, then I know no one other better.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in his Spinoza conversations with Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1780). Ref.: Vallée, Gérard (ed.): The Spinoza Conversations between Lessing and Jacobi: Text with Excerpts from the Ensuing Controve…
“There is no other philosophy than that of Spinoza.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in his Spinoza conversations with Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1780). Ref.: Vallée, Gérard (ed.): The Spinoza Conversations between Lessing and Jacobi: Text with Excerpts from the Ensuing Controve…
“The book recognized as containing the most complete attempt at explaining and defending pantheism from a philosophical perspective is Spinoza's Ethics, finished in 1675 two years before his death. In 1720 John Toland wrote the Pantheisticon: or The Form of Celebrating the Socratic-Society in Latin. He (possibly) coined the term “pantheist” and used it as a synonym for “Spinozist.”
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Recorded in: Michael P. Levine, Pantheism: A Non-Theistic Concept of Deity. (London: Routledge, 1994)
“...The doctrine of Spinoza was of great importance, if for nothing more than having brought about the first crisis in modern Philosophy.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: George Henry Lewes, in his A Biographical History of Philosophy, Volumes III & IV (London: C. Knight & Company, 1846)
“...I am not so well read in Hobbes or Spinoza, as to be able to say what were their opinions in this matter [the life after death]. But, possibly, there be those who will think your lordship's authority of more use to them in the case than those justly decried names;”
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Recorded in: John Locke, second reply to the Bishop of Worcester, 1697
“...Jews seem to have superiority as actors, chess-players, doctors, merchants (chiefly financiers), in metaphysics, music, poetry, and philology.... Of course, Jews have no Darwin. It took England 180 years after Newton before she could produce a Darwin, and as Britishers are five times the number of Jews, even including those of Russia, it would take, on the same showing, 900 years before they produce another Spinoza, or, even supposing the double superiority to be true, 450 years would be needed.”
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) said by 1677 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Spinoza] — the philosopher whom I trust most,... [Original in German: Der Philosoph, dem ich zumeist vertraue,...]”
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Recorded in: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in his Zahme Xenien. As quoted in Julie D. Prandi's “Dare To Be Happy!”: A Study of Goethe's Ethics (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993)
“His [Spinoza's] correspondence is the most interesting book one can read in the world of uprightness and of humanity. [Original in German: Sei Briefwechsel sei das interessanteste Buch, das man in der Welt von Aufrichtigkeit, Menschenliebe lesen könne.]”
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Recorded in: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as quoted in A. Wolf, The Correspondence of Spinoza (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1928)
“Last night, I was diligently reluctant to read last in our saint [i.e. Spinoza] and thought of you. [Original in German: Gestern Abend war ich nur wider Willen fleisig und las noch zuletzt in unserm Heiligen und dachte an dich.]”
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Recorded in: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in one of his letters to Charlotte von Stein, 1784
“I practice Spinoza, I read and read it again, and wait with longing for the fight over his corpse. I abstain from all judgment, but I confess that I am very much in agreement with Herder in these matters. [Original in German: Ich übe mich an Spinoza, ich lese und lese ihn wieder, und erwarte mit Verlangen biß der Streit über seinen Leichnam losbrechen wird. Ich enthalte mich alles Urtheils doch bekenne ich, daß ich mit Herdern in diesen Materien sehr einverstanden bin.]”
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Recorded in: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in one of his letters to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, 1785
“He [Spinoza] does not prove the existence of God, existence is God. And if for this reason others would brand him Atheum then I would praise him and call him theissimum and christianissimum. [Original in German: Du erkennst die höchste Realität an, welche der Grund des ganzen Spinozismus ist, worauf alles übrige ruht, woraus alles übrigefliest. Er [Spinoza] beweist nicht das Daseyn Gottes, das Daseyn ist Gott. Und wenn ihn andre deshalb Atheum schelten, so mögte ich ihn theissimum ja christianissimum nennen und preisen.]”
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Recorded in: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in one of his letters to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, 1785
“I always carry the Ethics of Spinoza with me. [Original in German: Ich führe, die Ethik von Spinoza immer bei mir; er hat die Mathematik in die Ethik gebracht, so ich in die Farbenlehre, das heißt: da steht nichts im Hintersatz, was nicht im Vordersatz schon begründet ist.]”
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Recorded in: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in a conversation with Sulpiz Boisserée, 3 August 1815. As quoted in Julie D. Prandi's “Dare To Be Happy!”: A Study of Goethe's Ethics (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993)