Quote by Baruch Spinoza: “Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue, a state of mind.”

Stopping a war does not automatically create peace. Real peace is an active state — of justice, cooperation, and goodwill — that has to be built and maintained. Simply ceasing to fight leaves you in a kind of armed silence, not genuine harmony.

Spinoza published the Theologico-Political Treatise in 1670 during a period of intense religious conflict and political repression in Europe. He was writing from Amsterdam, which offered relative tolerance, but was well aware of the wars being waged in the name of religion across the continent.

Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin whose rationalist philosophy challenged religious orthodoxy and laid foundations for the Enlightenment. His masterwork Ethics, published posthumously in 1677, argued that God and Nature were one and the same substance.