Thomas Hobbes Quotes

The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.

No arts, no letters - no society.

Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the conversation, and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify our appetites, and aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different.

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.

A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him.

I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.

By how much one man has more experience of things past, than another, by so much also he is more prudent, and his expectations the seldomer fail him.

Desire of praise disposeth to laudable actions.

A democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orators. The people are so readily moved by demagogues that control must be exercised by the government over speech and press.

I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.

When a man tells me God hath spoken in a dream, I know he dreamt that God spoke to him.

To say God spake or appeared as he is in his own nature, is to deny his Infiniteness, Invisibility, Incomprehensibility.

If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun.

Leisure can be one of the Mothers of Philosophy.

As a draft-animal is yoked in a wagon, even so the spirit is yoked in this body

A great leap in the dark

By this we may understand, there be two sorts of knowledge, whereof the one is nothing else but sense, or knowledge original (as I have said at the beginning of the second chapter), and remembrance of the same; the other is called science or knowledge of the truth of propositions, and how things are called, and is derived from understanding.

For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself

Prudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men in those things they equally apply themselves unto.

Scientia potentia est, sed parva; quia scientia egregia rara est, nec proinde apparens nisi paucissimis, et in paucis rebus. Scientiae enim ea natura est, ut esse intelligi non possit, nisi ab illis qui sunt scientia praediti.

Love is a person's idea about his/her needs in other person what you are attracted to.

Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases; rashness, with mischance; injustice; with violence of enemies; pride, with ruin; cowardice, with oppression; and rebellion, with slaughter.

And I profess still, that whatsoever the church of England (the church, I say, not every doctor) shall forbid me to say in matterof faith, I shall abstain from saying it, excepting this point, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for my sins. As for other doctrines, I think it unlawful, if the church define them, for any member of the church to contradict them.

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry... no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Obligation is thraldom, and thraldom is hateful.

Corporations are may lesser commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man.

It's not the pace of life I mind. It's the sudden stop at the end.

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.

I mean by the universe, the aggregate of all things that have being in themselves; and so do all men else. And because God has a being, it follows that he is either the whole universe, or part of it. Nor does his Lordship go about to disprove it, but only seems to wonder at it.

Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy.

And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.

But his Lordship [tells]us that God is wholly here, and wholly there, and wholly every where; because he has no parts. I cannot comprehend nor conceive this. For methinks it implies also that the whole world is also in the whole God, and in every part of God. Norcan I find anything of this in the Scripture. If I could find it there, I could believe it; and if I could find it in the public doctrine of the Church, I could easily abstain from contradicting it.

As soon as a thought darts, I write it down.

Man is distinguished not only by his reason, but also by this singular passion, from all other animals.

A man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force, to take away his life.

Baptism is the sacrament of allegiance of them that are to be received into the Kingdom of God, that is to say, into Eternal life, that is to say, to Remission of Sin. For as Eternal life was lost by the committing, so it is recovered by the remitting of men's sins.

... it is one thing to desire, another to be in capacity fit for what we desire.

A free man is he that, in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to.

No mans error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.

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.

Do not that to another, which thou wouldst not have done to thyself.

Heresy is a word which, when it is used without passion, signifies a private opinion. So the different sects of the old philosophers, Academians, Peripatetics, Epicureans, Stoics, &c., were called heresies.

The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life.

The reputation of power IS power.

Religions are like pills, which must be swallowed whole without chewing.

The world is governed by opinion.

For it can never be that war shall preserve life, and peace destroy it.