"A free man thinks of death least of all things, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life."
— Baruch Spinoza
A Free Man Thinks Of Death
A free man thinks of death least of all things, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.
About this quote
From Part IV of the Ethics (1677), Proposition 67, this claim is central to Spinoza's rejection of fear-based morality. While Aristotle and later Thomas Aquinas also distinguished contemplation of death from a preoccupation with it, Spinoza goes further: a free person — one guided by reason rather than fear — has no occasion to think of death at all. Life, understood as the full exercise of rational power, is the only proper object of the wise person's attention.
Source
Ethics, 1677