Thomas Hobbes Quotes

197 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Thomas Hobbes
There be as many persons of a king, as there be petty constables in his kingdom. And so there are, or else he cannot be obeyed. But I never said that a king, and every one of his persons, are the same substance.

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
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
A private man has always the liberty (because thought is free) to believe or not believe in his heart those acts that have been given out for miracles, according as he shall see what benefits can accrue by men's belief, to those that pretend, or countenance them, and thereby conjecture whether they be miracles or lies.

Thomas Hobbes
As much experience, is "prudence;" so, is much science "sapience."

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

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
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
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
For as the nature of foul weather, lieth not in a shower or two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.

Thomas Hobbes
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.

Thomas Hobbes
Wisdom, properly so called, is nothing else but this: the perfect knowledge of the truth in all matters whatsoever.

Thomas Hobbes
It is not easy to fall into any absurdity, unless it be by the length of an account; wherein he may perhaps forget what went before. For all men by nature reason alike, and well, when they have good principles.

Thomas Hobbes
The characters of man's heart, blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him that searcheth hearts.

Thomas Hobbes
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.

Thomas Hobbes
Nature (the Art whereby God hath made and governs the World) is by the Art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an Artificial Animal. For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within; why may we not say, that all Automata (Engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life?

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

Thomas Hobbes
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
It is impossible to make any profound inquiry into natural causes without being inclined thereby to believe there is one God eternal.

Thomas Hobbes
The passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason.

Thomas Hobbes
To say that God is an incorporeal substance, is to say in effect there is no God at all. What alleges he against it, but the School-divinity which I have already answered? Scripture he can bring none, because the word incorporeal is not found in Scripture.

Thomas Hobbes
The oath adds nothing to the obligation. For a covenant, if lawful, binds in the sight of God, without the oath, as much as with it; if unlawful, bindeth not at all, though it be confirmed with an oath.

Thomas Hobbes
From desire ariseth the thought of some means we have seen produce the like of that which we aim at; and from the thought of that, the thought of means to that mean; and so continually till we come to some beginning within our own power.

Thomas Hobbes