Thomas Hobbes Quotes

197 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

Thomas Hobbes
The original of all great and lasting societies consisted not in the mutual good will men had toward each other, but in the mutual fear they had of each other.

Thomas Hobbes
And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.

Thomas Hobbes
In sum, all actions and habits are to be esteemed good or evil by their causes and usefulness in reference to the commonwealth, and not by their mediocrity, nor by their being commended. For several men praise several customs, and, contrarily, what one calls vice, another calls virtue, as their present affections lead them.

Thomas Hobbes
The best men are the least suspicious of fraudulent purposes.

Thomas Hobbes
Geometry... is the Mother of all Natural Science.

Thomas Hobbes
By how much one man has more experience of things past, than another, by so much also he is more prudent, and his expectations the seldomer fail him.

Thomas Hobbes
If God bestowed immortality on every man then when he made him, and he made many to whom he never purposed to give his saving grace, what did his Lordship think that God gave any man immortality with purpose only to make him capable of immortal torments? It is a hard saying, and I think cannot piously be believed. I am sure it can never be proved by the canonical Scripture.

Thomas Hobbes
When a thing lies still, unless somewhat else stir it, it will lie still forever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that when a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat else stay it, though the reason be the same, namely, that nothing can change itself, is not so easily assented to.

Thomas Hobbes
As, in Sense, that which is really within us, is (as I have said before) only Motion, caused by the action of external objects, but in appearance; to the Sight, Light and Color; to the Ear, Sound; to the Nostril, Odor, &c.

Thomas Hobbes