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.
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Benedictus de Spinoza's Other Quotes
I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
All determination is negation.
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.
Related Quotes
The universe itself is God and the universal outpouring of its soul.
-- Chrysippus of Soli
For truly art lies hidden in nature; whoever can draw it out possesses it.
-- Albrecht Dürer
The secret of art is to correct nature.
-- Sandro Botticelli
I do not copy nature; I reveal it.
-- Caravaggio
Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone.
-- Paul Cézanne
I invent nothing; I rediscover.
-- Auguste Rodin