Top 100 Quotes About Thomas Hobbes: Famous Quotes & Sayings About Thomas Hobbes

#1. Thomas Hobbes's politics are fitted only to promote tyranny, and his ethics to encourage licentiousness.

#2. As Thomas Hobbes said, If I read as many books as most men do, I would be as dull-witted as they are.

#3. For five years he [Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)] served as personal secretary to, yes, Francis Bacon. In fact, I've noted over a course of years that the job of a secretary can be utterly fulfilling just in case one's boss happens to be Francis Bacon.

Daniel N. Robinson

#4. Christians - at least Christians in a liberal democracy - have accepted, after Thomas Hobbes, that they must obey the secular rule of law; that there must be a separation of church and state.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

#5. However, it was the great 18th century social philosophers John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who brought the concept of a social contract between citizens and governments sharply into political thinking, paving the way for popular democracy and constitutional republicanism.

Simon Mainwaring

#6. Thomas Hobbes in his 1651 masterwork Leviathan. I strongly recommend that you read part III, chapter 38, and part IV, chapter 44,

Anonymous

#7. There is more in Mersenne than in all the universities together.

Thomas Hobbes

#8. Obligation is thraldom, and thraldom is hateful.

Thomas Hobbes

#9. Life is nasty, brutish, and short

Thomas Hobbes

#10. 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.

Thomas Hobbes

#11. Leisure is the mother of Philosophy

Thomas Hobbes

#12. Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#15. Men measure not only other men, but all other things, by themselves.

Thomas Hobbes

#16. Nature indeed plants the seeds of religion--fear and ignorance; kingcraft and priestcraft water and tend it.

W.G. Pogson Smith

#17. 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

Thomas Hobbes

#18. During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.

Thomas Hobbes

#19. To speak impartially, both sayings are very true: that man to man is a kind of God; and that man to man is an arrant wolf. The first is true, if we compare citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we compare cities.

Thomas Hobbes

#20. Whatsoever is the object of any man's Appetite or Desire; that is it which he for his part calleth Good: and the object of his Hate and Aversion, evil.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#23. Prophecy is many times the principal cause of the events foretold.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#26. 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.

Thomas Hobbes

#27. 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

Thomas Hobbes

#28. I think, therefore matter is capable of thinking.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#30. When the nature of the thing is incomprehensible, I can acquiesce in the Scripture: but when the signification of words is incomprehensible, I cannot acquiesce in the authority of a Schoolman.

Thomas Hobbes

#31. The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.

Thomas Hobbes

#32. For naturall Bloud is in like manner made of the fruits of the Earth; and circulating, nourisheth by the way, every Member of the Body of Man.

Thomas Hobbes

#33. Curiosity is the lust of the mind.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#37. 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.

Thomas Hobbes

#38. Words are the money of fools.

Thomas Hobbes

#39. 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.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#41. 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.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#43. This I know; God cannot sin, because his doing a thing makes it just, and consequently, no sin ... And therefore it is blasphemy to say, God can sin; but to say, that God can so order the world, as a sin may be necessarily caused thereby in a man, I do not see how it is any dishonor to him.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#46. 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.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#49. The Pacts and Covenants, by which the parts of this Body Politique were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that Fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced by God in the Creation.

Thomas Hobbes

#50. It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.

Thomas Hobbes

#51. If this superstitious fear of Spirits were taken away, and with it, Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted then they are for civill Obedience.

Thomas Hobbes

#52. In a Democracy, look how many Demagogs that is how many powerful Orators there are with the people.

Thomas Hobbes

#53. And therefore in geometry (which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind), men begin at settling the significations of their words; which settling of significations, they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning.

Thomas Hobbes

#54. What reason is there that he which laboreth much, and, sparing the fruits of his labor, consumeth little, should be more charged than he that, living idly, getteth little and spendeth all he gets, seeing the one hath no more protection from the commonwealth than the other?

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#56. Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.

Thomas Hobbes

#57. 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.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#59. If I may paraphrase Hobbes's well-known aphorism, I would say that 'books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.

Thomas Henry Huxley

#60. When two, or more men, know of one and the same fact, they are said to be CONSCIOUS of it one to another; which is as much as to know it together.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#62. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

Thomas Hobbes

#63. Nor can a man any more live, whose Desires are at an end, than he, whose Senses and Imaginations are at a stand.

Thomas Hobbes

#64. The Imagination that is raised in man (or any other creature imbued with the faculty of imagining) by words, or other voluntary signs, is that we generally call Understanding; and is common to Man and Beasts.

Thomas Hobbes

#65. And this Feare of things invisible, is the naturall Seed of that, which every one in himself calleth Religion; and in them that worship, or feare that Power otherwise than they do, Superstition.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#67. It is in the laws of a commonwealth, as in the laws of gaming: Whatsoever the gamesters all agree on, is injustice to none of them.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#70. Because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdities of my waking thoughts, I am well satisfied that being awake, I know I dream not; though when I dream, I think myself awake.

Thomas Hobbes

#71. Give an inch, he'll take an ell.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#73. 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.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#75. As, in Sense, that which is really within us, is (as I have said before) only Motion, caused by the action of external objects, but in appearance; to the Sight, Light and Color; to the Ear, Sound; to the Nostril, Odor, &c.

Thomas Hobbes

#76. Because silver and gold have their value from the matter itself, they have first this privilege, that the value of them cannot be altered by the power of one, nor of a few commonwealths, as being a common measure of the commodities of all places. But base money may easily be enhanced or abased.

Thomas Hobbes

#77. For such is the nature of man, 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: For they see their own wit at hand, and other mens at a distance.

Thomas Hobbes

#78. 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.

Thomas Hobbes

#79. The science which teacheth arts and handicrafts is merely science for the gaining of a living; but the science which teacheth deliverance from worldly existence, is not that the true science?

Thomas Hobbes

#80. Reason is the Soul of the Law.

Thomas Hobbes

#81. So easy are men to be drawn to believe any thing, from such men as have gotten credit with them; and can with gentleness and dexterity take hold of their fear and ignorance.

Thomas Hobbes

#82. Time, and Industry, produce everyday new knowledge.

Thomas Hobbes

#83. Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money.

Thomas Hobbes

#84. The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions. Defect in the understanding is ignorance; in reasoning, erroneous opinion.

Thomas Hobbes

#85. 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.

Thomas Hobbes

#86. The power of a man is his present means to obtain some future apparent good.

Thomas Hobbes

#87. Prudence is a presumption of the future, contracted from the experience of time past.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

#89. Immortality is a belief grounded upon other men's sayings, that they knew it supernaturally; or that they knew those who knew them that knew others that knew it supernaturally.

Thomas Hobbes

#90. 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.

Thomas Hobbes

#91. True and false are attributes of speech not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood. Error theremay be, as when we expect that which shall not be; or suspect what has not been: but in neither case can a man be charged with untruth.

Thomas Hobbes

#92. A great leap in the dark

Thomas Hobbes

#93. 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.

Thomas Hobbes