Thomas Hobbes quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Thomas Hobbes on Wise Famous Quotes.

Every man may think his own cause just till it be heard and judged.

Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed, [is] religion; not allowed, superstition.

I shall be glad then to find a hole to creep out of the world.

From whence it follows, that were the publique and private interest are most closely united, there is the publique most advanced.

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

For all uniting of strength by private men, is, if for evil intent, unjust; if for intent unknown, dangerous to the Publique, and unjustly concealed.

Understanding is by the flame of the passions never enlightened, but dazzled.

The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only.

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.

Hell is truth seen too late.

No man's error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.

Curiosity is the lust of the mind.

The law is the public conscience.

Desire of praise disposeth to laudable actions.

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

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

It is many times with a fraudulent Design that men stick their corrupt Doctrine with the Cloves of other mens Wit.

To be seduced by Orators, as a Monarch by Flatterers.

Leisure can be one of the Mothers of Philosophy.

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.

And as in other things, so in men, not the seller, but the buyer determines the Price.

Words are the money of fools.

And seeing every man is presumed to do all things in order to his own benefit, no man is a fit Arbitrator in his own cause

Ambition, and Covetousnesse are Passions that are perpetually incumbent, and pressing.

Let a man (as most men do) rate themselves as the highest Value they can; yet their true Value is no more than it is esteemed by others.

Appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair.

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

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.

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

It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.

The Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.

Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.

Ignorance of the law is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the laws to which he is subject.

He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy.

All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.

The reputation of power IS power.

Leisure is the mother of Philosophy

A man's conscience and his judgment are the same thing, and, as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous

Government is necessary, not because man is naturally bad ... but because man is by nature more individualistic than social.

Curiosity draws a man from consideration of the effect, to seek the cause.

Men looke not at the greatnesse of the evill past, but the greatnesse of the good to follow.

A Covenant not to defend my selfe from force, by force, is always voyd.

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.

In the very shadows of doubt a thread of reason (so to speak) begins, by whose guidance we shall escape to the clearest light.

The first cause of Absurd conclusions I ascribe to the want of Method.

He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himselfe, not this, or that particular man; but Man-kind;

Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter.

Setting themselves against reason, as often as reason is against them.

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.

If men are naturally in a state of war, why do they always carry arms and why do they have keys to lock their doors?

Of all Discourse , governed by desire of Knowledge, there is at last an End , either by attaining, or by giving over.

The Enemy has been here in the night of our natural ignorance, and sown the tares of spiritual errors.

Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which every one in himself calleth religion.

That wee have of Geometry, which is the mother of all Naturall Science, wee are not indebted for it to the Schools.

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

Competition of praise inclineth to a reverence of antiquity. For men contend with the living, not with the dead.

All men, among themselves, are by nature equal. The inequality we now discern hath its spring from the civil law.

To understand this for sense it is not required that a man should be a geometrician or a logician, but that he should be mad.

Science [is] knowledge of the truth of Propositions and how things are called.

No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute Knowledge of Fact.

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

I think, therefore matter is capable of thinking.

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

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

A great leap in the dark

For if all things were equally in all men, nothing would be prized.

Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.

Corporations are "worms in the body politic"

This is that law of the Gospel; whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them.

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

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

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

Liberty, to define it, is nothing other than the absence of impediments to motion

Life is nasty, brutish, and short

For it is not the shape, but their use, that makes them angels.

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

Reason is the Soul of the Law.

Time, and Industry, produce everyday new knowledge.

For all laws are general judgements, or sentences of the legislator; as also every particular judgement is a law to him whose case is judged.

Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.

The first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it.

No man can be judge to his own cause.

Christian Kings may erre in deducing a Consequence, but who shall Judge?

The end of knowledge is power ... the scope of all speculation is the performing of some action or thing to be done.

So that every Crime is a sinne; but not every sinne a Crime.

Geometry is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind.

Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

Scientia potentia est.

Knowledge is power.

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

Covenants without swords are but words.

Power as is really divided, and as dangerously to all purposes, by sharing with another an Indirect Power, as a Direct one.

No man is bound by the words themselves, either to kill himselfe, or any other man.

What is the heart but a spring, and the nerves but so many strings, and the joints but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body?

Where there is no common power, there is no law

The object of man's desire is not to enjoy once only, and for one instant of time; but to assure for ever, the way of his future desires.

Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter.

And where men build on false grounds, the more they build, the greater is the ruine

It's my turn, to take a leap into the darkness!

Nature itself cannot err

Obligation is thraldom, and thraldom is hateful.