God, or Nature.
Deus sive Natura
Philosophers
Benedictus de Spinoza
Born in Amsterdam in 1632, Baruch de Spinoza was a heretical philosopher who was excommunicated from the Jewish community and earned his living grinding lenses. In his masterwork Ethics, he used the geometric method to demonstrate the identity of God and Nature, establishing himself — alongside Descartes and Leibniz — as one of the pillars of early-modern rationalism. His pantheistic worldview deeply impressed thinkers from Goethe to Einstein and quietly shaped the currents of modern thought.
View this figure's profile
Benedictus de Spinoza's Other Quotes
Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.
A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.
All determination is negation.
I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
Related Quotes
The universe itself is God and the universal outpouring of its soul.
-- Chrysippus of Soli
The cosmos itself is a living being — wise, provident, intelligent.
-- Posidonius
Has creation a final goal? And if so, why was it not reached at once?... Because God is Life, and not merely Being.
-- Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
The living and efficaciously acting moral order is itself God.
-- Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Nature is conquered only by obedience.
-- Francis Bacon
O thou who governest the world by everlasting reason.
-- Boethius