Thomas Hobbes Quotes

197 Sourced Quotes

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
Christian Kings may erre in deducing a Consequence, but who shall Judge?

Thomas Hobbes
A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him.

Thomas Hobbes
For it is with the mysteries of our religion, as with wholesome pills for the sick, which swallowed whole, have the virtue to cure; but chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect.

Thomas Hobbes
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.

Thomas Hobbes
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
There is nothing so pernicious as reading. It destroys all originality of sentiment.

Thomas Hobbes
No man is bound by the words themselves, either to kill himselfe, or any other man.

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

Thomas Hobbes
By this we may understand, there be two sorts of knowledge, whereof the one is nothing else but sense, or knowledge original (as I have said at the beginning of the second chapter), and remembrance of the same; the other is called science or knowledge of the truth of propositions, and how things are called, and is derived from understanding.

Thomas Hobbes
The passion of laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmities of others, or with our own formerly...

Thomas Hobbes
By consequence, or train of thoughts, I understand that succession of one thought to another which is called, to distinguish it from discourse in words, mental discourse. When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently.

Thomas Hobbes
As first a man cannot lay down the right of resisting them, that assault him by force, to take away his life; because he cannot be understood to ayme thereby, at any Good to himself.

Thomas Hobbes
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
As in the presence of the Master, the Servants are equall, and without any honour at all; So are the Subjects, in the presence of the Soveraign. And though they shine some more, some lesse, when they are out of his sight; yet in his presence, they shine no more than the Starres in presence of the Sun.

Thomas Hobbes
I Authorize and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to his Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou that give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actionsin like manner. This done, the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a COMMON-WEALTH, in latine CIVITAS. This is the Generation of that LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speake more reverently)of that Mortall God, to which we owe under the Immortal God, our peace and defence.

Thomas Hobbes
A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.

Thomas Hobbes
The source of every Crime, is some defect of the Understanding; or some error in Reasoning; or some sudden force of the Passions.

Thomas Hobbes
And for Incoherent Speech, it was amongst the Gentiles taken for one sort of Prophecy, because the Prophets of their Oracles, intoxicated with a spirit, or vapor from the cave of the Pythian Oracle at Delphi, were for a time really mad, and spake like mad-men; of whoose loose words a sense might be made to fit any event, in such sort, as all bodies are said to be made of Materia prima.

Thomas Hobbes
There are very few so foolish that they had not rather govern themselves than be governed by others.

Thomas Hobbes
For Appetite with an opinion of attaining, is called HOPE.

Thomas Hobbes
For War, consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to contend by battle is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of Time, is to be considered in the nature of War; as it is in the nature of Weather.

Thomas Hobbes
Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.

Thomas Hobbes
And as to the faculties of the mind, setting aside the arts grounded upon words, and especially that skill of proceeding upon generall, and infallible rules, called Science; which very few have, and but in few things; as being not a native faculty, born within us; nor attained, (as Prudence,) while we look after somewhat else.

Thomas Hobbes
A Covenant not to defend my selfe from force, by force, is always voyd.

Thomas Hobbes
And if a man consider the original of this great Ecclesiastical Dominion, he will easily perceive, that the Papacy, is no other than the Ghost of the deceased Romane Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: For so did the Papacy start up on a Sudden out of the Ruines of that Heathen Power.

Thomas Hobbes
Time, and Industry, produce everyday new knowledge.

Thomas Hobbes
For it can never be that war shall preserve life, and peace destroy it.

Thomas Hobbes
But all this language gotten, and augmented by Adam and his posterity, was again lost at the tower of Babel, when by the hand of God, every man was stricken for his rebellion, with an oblivion of his former language.

Thomas Hobbes