How many philosophers and historians of philosophy have gone along with the academies, burning with the desire to be able to sit there! The Dutch tho… - Benedictus de Spinoza

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

I have laboured carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand human actions.

Spinoza would not tolerate restrictions, imposed by any political or religious system or by any moral attitude. He struggled for the ideal of free thought. Hardly any other philosopher made so many enemies. He was labelled ‘a troublemaking Jew’, banned from the synagogue and from the academic establishment. Even his pupils would acknowledge him in private. And when Karl Ludwig asked the impoverished lonely philosopher to lecture at the University of Heidelberg, he turned him down. Spinoza could not guarantee that his thinking would not threaten ‘widely accepted religious concepts’. The philosopher in him preferred the quiet retiring life to a bourgeois career.