Top 256 Quotes & Sayings by Thomas Hobbes - Page 2

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

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

For there are very few so foolish who would not rather govern themselves than be governed by others.

Faith is a gift of God, which man can neither give nor take away by promise of rewards or menace of torture.

Nature itself cannot err

Life is nasty, brutish, and short

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.

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

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

They that are discontented under monarchy, call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy, call it oligarchy: so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy, call it anarchy, which signifies the want of government; and yet I think no man believes, that want of government, is any new kind of government.

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

Good and Evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions, which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different: And diverse men differ not only in their judgment, on the senses of what is pleasant and unpleasant to the taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight, but also of what is conformable, or disagreeable to Reason, in the actions of the common life. Nay, the same man, in diverse times, differs from himself, and one time praiseth, that is, calleth Good, what another time he dispraiseth, and calleth Evil.

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

There is no action of man in this life that is not the beginning of so long a chain of consequences as no human providence is high enough to give a man a prospect in the end. And in this chain, there are linked together both pleasing and unpleasing events in such manner as he that will do anything for his pleasure must engage himself to suffer all the pains annexed to it.

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

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.

Silence is sometimes an argument of Consent.

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.

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

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

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

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

No man can be judge to his own cause.

I think, therefore matter is capable of thinking.

Words are the counters of wise men, but the money of fools.

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

Obligation is thraldom, and thraldom is hateful.

Reason is the Soul of the Law.

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

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.

From what cause the rite of baptism first proceeded is not expressed formally in the scripture, but it may be probably thought to be an imitation of the law of Moses concerning leprosy, wherein the leprous man was commanded to be kept out of the camp of Israel for a certain time, after which time being judged by the priest to be clean, he was admitted into the camp after a solemn washing. And this may therefore be a type of the washing in baptism, wherein such men as are cleansed of the leprosy of Sin by Faith, are received into the church with the solemnity of baptism.

The "value" or "worth" of a man is, as of all other things, his price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power.

Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.

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

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

The Present only has a being in Nature; things Past have a being in the Memory only, but things to come have no being at all; the Future but a fiction of the mind.

A Law of Nature, (Lex Naturalis) is a Precept, or general Rule, found out by Reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit, that, by which he thinketh it may be best preserved.

The Register of Knowledge of Fact is called History .

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. For the right men have by Nature to protect themselves, when none else can protect them, can by no Covenant be relinquished. ... [The right] to defend ourselves [is the] summe of the Right of Nature.

No arts, no letters - no society.

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

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

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

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

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

The value of all things contracted for, is measured by the appetite of the contractors, and therefore the just value is that which they be contented to give.

The reputation of power IS power.

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

The best men are the least suspicious of fraudulent purposes.

True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood.

If I had read as much as other men I would have known no more than they.

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

So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he has already attained to, or that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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.