Thomas Hobbes Quotes.
Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
The condition of man… is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.
The passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason.
Such truth, as opposeth no man’s profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome.
The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is a lust of the mind.
The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.
The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.
Ignorance of the law is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the laws to which he is subject.
If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun.
I think, therefore matter is capable of thinking.
There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.
If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.
Prudence is but experience, which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.
Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter.
Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money.
How could a state be governed, or protected in its foreign relations if every individual remained free to obey or not to obey the law according to his private opinion.
Hell is Truth Seen Too Late.
War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known.
That a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defense of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.
Words are the money of fools.
The disembodied spirit is immortal; there is nothing of it that can grow old or die. But the embodied spirit sees death on the horizon as soon as its day dawns.
Government is necessary, not because man is naturally bad… but because man is by nature more individualistic than social.
The Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.
It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law
All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called ‘Facts’. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.
The best men are the least suspicious of fraudulent purposes.
In the state of nature profit is the measure of right.
Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.
Curiosity is the lust of the mind.
No man’s error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.
The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only.
I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.
Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation.
To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.
Such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves.
When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death.
The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.
Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.
Obligation is thraldom, and thraldom is hateful.
The original of all great and lasting societies consisted not in the mutual good will men had toward each other, but in the mutual fear they had of each other.
Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.
A man’s conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.
