A Covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void. For... no man can transfer or lay down his Right to save himself from Death.

Opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotion to what men fear, and talking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth the natural seeds of religion

Subjects have no greater liberty in a popular than in a monarchial state. That which deceives them is the equal participation of command.

For after the subject is removed or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the things seen, though more obscure than when we see it...Imagination, therefore, is nothing more than decaying sense.

[Necessity is] the sum of all things, which being now existent, conduce and concur to the production of that action hereafter, whereof if any one thing now were wanting, the effect could not be produced. This concourse of causes, whereof every one is determined to be such as it is by a like concourse of former causes, may well be called (in respect they were all set and ordered by the eternal causes of all things, God Almighty) the decree of God.

Humans are driven by a perpetual and restless desire of power.

It is fairer to tax people on what they extract from the economy, as roughly measured by their consumption, than to tax them on what they produce for the economy, as roughly measured by their income.