إنَّ بعض اليهود يَرَون أنَّ الله لم ينطق بألفاظ الوصايا العشر حرفيًّا، ويعتقدون أن الإسرائيليين سَمِعوا مُجرَّد ضوضاء عالية لا تتميَّز فيها الكلمات، وخلال هذه الضوض… - Benedictus de Spinoza

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

What is remarkable is how popular this heretic remains nearly three and a half centuries after his death, and not just among scholars. Spinoza's contemporaries, René Descartes and Gottfried Leibniz, made enormously important and influential contributions to the rise of modern philosophy and science, but you won’t find many committed Cartesians or Leibnizians around today. The Spinozists, however, walk among us. They are non-academic devotees who form Spinoza societies and study groups, who gather to read him in public libraries and in synagogues and Jewish community centres. Hundreds of people, of various political and religious persuasions, will turn out for a day of lectures on Spinoza, whether or not they have ever read him. There have been novels, poems, sculptures, paintings, even plays and operas devoted to Spinoza.

Twenty-some years ago, when at the age of forty I returned to the study of the Ethics, which had been 'my book' during adolescence, the theoretical climate in which I found myself immersed had changed to such an extent that it was difficult to tell if the Spinoza standing before me then was the same one who had accompanied me in my earliest studies.