Question 1

What is the best book to start with?

Accepted Answer

Ethics, part 1 appendix, then part 3 preface and propositions 6 to 9, in Curley The appendix is continuous prose on the prejudice of freedom. The opening of part 3 shows the method and the striving on which the ethics runs.

Question 2

What is the most famous quote?

Accepted Answer

This library does not measure fame, and it does not rank lines by how often they are shared. The first line it files for Baruch Spinoza that is not marked Questionable or Misattributed is “A free person thinks of death least of all things, and their wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.” (Ethics, part IV, proposition 67, Paraphrase or translation).

Question 3

What is the most misquoted line?

Accepted Answer

None of the lines this library files for Baruch Spinoza is marked Misattributed or Questionable. That is a fact about these cards, not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.

Question 4

What is one key idea, in a sentence?

Accepted Answer

One substance: Whatever is, is in God, and God is nature, not a person outside the world issuing decrees.