Thomas Hobbes Quotes

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The signs of science are, some certain and infallible; some, uncertain. Certain, when he that pretendeth the science of anything, can teach the same; that is to say, demonstrate the truth thereof perspicuously to another; uncertain, when only some particular events answer to his pretence, and upon many occasions prove so as he says they must.

Thomas Hobbes
Can it then be doubted, but that God, who is infinitely fine Spirit, and withal intelligent, can make and change all species and kind of body as he pleaseth? But I dare not say, that this is the way by which God Almighty worketh, because it is past my apprehension: yet it serves very well to demonstrate, that the omnipotence of God implieth no contradiction.

Thomas Hobbes
To conclude, The Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; Reason is the pace; Encrease of Science, the way; and the Benefit of man-kind, the end.

Thomas Hobbes
Emulation is grief arising from seeing one's self, exceeded or excelled by his concurrent, together with hope to equal or exceed him in time to come, by his own ability. But envy is the same grief joined with pleasure conceived in the imagination of some ill-fortune that may befall him.

Thomas Hobbes
In sum, in what matter so ever there is place for "addition" and "subtraction." there also is place for "reason;" and where these have no place, there "reason" has nothing to do at all.

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

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

Thomas Hobbes
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
Those men that are so remissly governed that they dare take up arms to defend or introduce an opinion, are still in war, and their condition not peace, but only a cessation of arms for fear of one another, and they live as it were in the precincts of battle continually.

Thomas Hobbes
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
"Imagination," therefore, is nothing but "decaying sense;" and is found in men, and many other living creatures, as well sleeping, as waking.

Thomas Hobbes
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
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
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
When we say anything is infinite, we signify only that we are not able to conceive the ends and bounds of the thing named.

Thomas Hobbes
It is manifest therefore that they who have sovereign power, are immediate rulers of the church under Christ, and all others but subordinate to them. If that were not, but kings should command one thing upon pain of death, and priests another upon pain of damnation, it would be impossible that peace and religion should stand together.

Thomas Hobbes
Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind, as that though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he.

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

Thomas Hobbes
The Scripture was written to shew unto men the kingdom of God; and to prepare their minds to become his obedient subjects; leavingthe world, and the Philosophy thereof, to the disputation of men, for the exercising of their natural Reason.

Thomas Hobbes
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.

Thomas Hobbes
Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men's preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men's wills such as men would have them.

Thomas Hobbes
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.

Thomas Hobbes
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
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.

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

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

Thomas Hobbes
The first author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as He presented to his sight...

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

Thomas Hobbes
The law is more easily understood by few than many words. For all words are subject to ambiguity, and therefore multiplication of words in the body of the law is multiplication of ambiguity. Besides, it seems to imply (by too much diligence) that whosoever can evade the words is without the compass of the law.

Thomas Hobbes
Science, like dress, has its fashions, and the changes in the one are almost as sudden and radical as in the other. Many a time has a theory become old and given place to a newer sensation, only to be later rehabilitated after its earlier service has been forgotten.

Thomas Hobbes