A Quote by Thomas Hobbes

Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.

Thomas Hobbes

Quote Topics

Madness Mere Most Part Passions

Quote Author

Thomas Hobbes
English - Philosopher
April 5, 1588 - December 4, 1679

Most SF is about madness, or what is currently ruled to be madness; this is part of its attraction - it's always playing with how much the human mind can encompass.

Brian Aldiss

Most humans know their own "reason" only in the sense that Hume defined it, as "a slave to the passions"-and by "passions" he meant not moral passions or the passions of transcendent genius, but only low appetites or base desires, which society and economy ultimately shape and spur on in us.

Kenny Smith

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.

George Bernard Shaw

Madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does.

Virginia Woolf

Jesus Christ raised women above the condition of mere slaves, mere ministers to the passions of the man, raised them by His sympathy, to be Ministers of God.

Florence Nightingale

War...seems a mere madness, a collective insanity.

Bertrand Russell

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.

Thomas Jefferson

As an actor, you have to have trust and believe that somebody is taking care of you or watching your back. With a part like this, especially with where we're going with it, I can't pull any punches. I can't do it halfway, especially when you're dealing with madness and this descent into madness.

Jessica Lange

I think the big danger of madness is not madness itself, but the habit of madness. What I discovered during the time I spent in the asylum is that I could choose madness and spend my whole life without working, doing nothing, pretending to be mad. It was a very strong temptation.

Paulo Coelho

All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.

Yann Martel

Men living in democratic times have many passions, but most of their passions either end in the love of riches, or proceed from it.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Anger is an affected madness, compounded of pride and folly, and an intention to do commonly more mischief than it can bring to pass; and, without doubt, of all passions which actually disturb the mind of man, it is most in our power to extinguish, at least, to suppress and correct, our anger.

Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon

In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too

Saul Bellow

For madness must be punished in a world in which mere sanity is prized. The revenge of the ordinary upon the gifted.

Joyce Carol Oates

Book CoverTo have people who are well informed but not constrained by conscience is conceivably, the most dangerous outcome of education possible. Indeed it could be argued that ignorance is better than unguided intelligence, for the most dangerous people are those who have knowledge without a moral framework.