George W. Bush vs. Baruch Spinoza

"I'm for an immigration policy that's welcoming."

#politics

"This is something the world should know about. Some have tried to pose a choice between American ideals and American interests — between who we are and how w…"

"Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom."

"Secondly, you are blessed to live in the greatest Nation – ever. Here you can strive and succeed as far as you dare to dream. It says something about our cou…"

#hope

"Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear."

"We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbour them."

#fear

"People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I'll give you an example; I don't read what's handed to me. People say, 'Here, here's your speech, or he…"

"Thank you. Thank you very much. President Turner, thanks. Members of the Board of Trustees, Provost Ludden, faculty, staff, distinguished guests, parents, an…"

#leadership

"I understand not everybody agrees with the decisions I've made, but that's not unique to Central or South America. Truth of the matter is, there's people who…"

#truth

"Lacking the military strength to challenge us directly, the terrorists have chosen the weapon of fear. When they murder children at a school in Beslan or blo…"

#war

"Iraq's talented people, rich culture, and tremendous potential have been hijacked by Saddam Hussein. His brutal regime has reduced a country with a long and …"

#art

"Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward, and freedom will be defended."

"Jazz, often called America's classical music, so influenced our culture that Americans named a decade after it. Like the country of its birth, jazz blends ma…"

#justice

"You have lifted a shadow of fear for many families. God bless you and may God bless the victims."

#religion

"In the defense of our nation, a president must be a clear-eyed realist. There are limits to the smiles and scowls of diplomacy. Armies and missiles are not s…"

#power

"My call tonight is for every American to commit at least two years — 4,000 hours over the rest of your lifetime, to the service of your neighbors and your na…"

"See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction."

#peace

"The state can do what they want to do. Don't try to trap me in this state's issue like you're trying to get me into."

#politics

"I think we ought to raise the age at which juveniles can have a gun."

All 702 quotes

Baruch Spinoza

1632 – 1677

Philosophy

Netherlands

465 quotes

Baruch (de) Spinoza, also known under his Latinized pen name Benedictus de Spinoza, was a philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, who was born and lived in the Dutch Republic. A forerunner of the Age of Enlightenment, Spinoza significantly influenced modern biblical criticism, 17th-century rationalism, and Dutch intellectual culture, establishing himself as one of the most important and radical philosophers of the early modern period. Influenced by Stoicism, Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, Ibn Tufayl, and heterodox Christians, Spinoza was a leading philosopher of the Dutch Golden Age.

"Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand."

#Human Nature

"While Schelling was wrestling with Plato, Spinoza, and Kant, his contemporary Hegel was struggling with Spinoza exclusively. In Hegel, Spinoza reached the he…"

"Good European" that he is, Spinoza takes from the Jewish tradition the common property of European ideas that it conveyed to him — and nothing else. Thus we …"

#justice

"Monist is, in fact, every philosophy that is not an eclectic patchwork. Therefore, I gladly admit to you that I myself consider my positions even more monist…"

#philosophy

"Hegel turned fully to Spinoza only in his early Jena years during his collaboration with Schelling, who had been especially inspired by Spinoza, and who, eve…"

#religion

"...We may deny his conclusions; we may consider his system of thought preposterous and even pernicious, but we cannot refuse him the respect which is the rig…"

"Spinoza is the anomaly. The fact that Spinoza, atheist and damned, does not end up behind bars or burned at the stake, like other revolutionary innovators of…"

#philosophy

"It is also a very curious thing. Why should a 17th-century Portuguese-Jewish philosopher whose dense and opaque writings are notoriously difficult to underst…"

#truth

"Immortality in Spinoza"

#death

"In the year 1888, before leaving the Normal School to face the experiences of actual life, he wrote Credo quia verum. This is a remarkable document, a spirit…"

#religion

"Today I have been reading Linné again and am quite unnerved by this extraordinary man. I have learned an infinite amount from him, not just in botany. Outsid…"

"The very starting-point of Spinoza, the search and discovery of the cause of causes, is hateful to Kant, who states that scientists err when they follow this…"

"...They have had the most painful history of all peoples, not without the fault of all of us, and when one owes to them the noblest man , the purest sage , t…"

#power

"Hegel is an admirable 'theoretician' of ideology insofar as he is a 'theoretician' of Universal Recognition who unfortunately ends up in the ideology of Abso…"

"In defining thought as an attribute Spinoza towered above any representative of mechanistic materialism and was at least two centuries in advance of his time…"

"The philosophy of a purely theoretical thinker, who contemplates all things from the point of view of things in themselves, belongs in the same class as the …"

"The encounter between the two greatest philosophers of the seventeenth century in fact extended over several days. From a letter Leibniz posted to the Duke o…"

"Spinoza's teachings were already known outside of Holland during the final years of his life . So fast did his fame spread that at a time when no Jew could o…"

"I confess without hesitation my dependence regarding the teachings of Spinoza. If I never cared to cite his name directly, it is because I never drew the ten…"