Kar

“Jacob, do you believe that God is all powerful?” Jacob nods. “That God is perfect? Complete unto Himself.” Again Jacob agrees. “Then surely you would agree that, by definition, a perfect and complete being has no needs, no insufficiencies, no wants, no wishes. Is that not so?” Jacob thinks, hesitates, and then nods warily. Spinoza notes the beginnings of a smile on Franco’s lips. “Then,” Spinoza continues, “I submit that God has no wishes about how, or even if, we glorify Him. Allow me, then, Jacob, to love God in my own fashion.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, The Spinoza Problem

“You say that imperishable happiness lies elsewhere. Tell me about this ‘elsewhere.’” “I only know that it does not lie in perishable objects. It lies not outside but within. It is the mind that determines what is fearful, worthless, desirable, or priceless, and therefore it is the mind, and only the mind, that must be altered.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, The Spinoza Problem

“When Einstein spoke of God, he spoke of Spinoza’s God—a God entirely equivalent to nature, a God that includes all substance, and a God “that doesn’t play dice with the universe”—by which he means that everything that happens, without exception, follows the orderly laws of nature.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, The Spinoza Problem

“I believe the problem has its root in a fundamental and massive error, the error of assuming that God is a living, thinking being, a being in our image, a being who thinks like us, a being who thinks about us.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, The Spinoza Problem