Baruch Spinoza Evil Quotations

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

A good thing which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil.

Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens.

In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another. For no one by the law of nature is bound to please another, unless he chooses, nor to hold anything to be good or evil, but what he himself, according to his own temperament, pronounces to be so; and, to speak generally, nothing is forbidden by the law of nature, except what is beyond everyone's power.

Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.