"I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them."
— Baruch Spinoza
I Have Striven Not To Laugh
I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
About this quote
This appears in the preface to the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), a courageous work published anonymously in which Baruch Spinoza argued for freedom of thought and the separation of theology from philosophy. The remark sets out his methodological ambition: to study human passions and political behaviour with the same dispassionate rigor a geometer applies to lines and planes. The Tractatus was immediately banned by the Amsterdam authorities and placed on the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books.
Source
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 1670