Quotes about Thomas Hobbes

3 Sourced Quotes

For those who take their politics from a book, an easier but much less effective way of learning than mine, this same proposition has been advanced in print by Thomas Hobbes, who wrote in England in the 1600s: "The reputation of power is power." Power is an illusion.

He [Thomas Hobbes] had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men, he should have known no more than other men.

Where the progressive enlightenment sees political ideals, the dark enlightenment sees appetites. It accepts that governments are made out of people, and that they will eat well. Setting its expectations as low as reasonably possible, it seeks only to spare civilization from frenzied, ruinous, gluttonous debauch. From Thomas Hobbes to Hans-Hermann Hoppe and beyond, it asks: How can the sovereign power be prevented—or at least dissuaded—from devouring society? It consistently finds democratic 'solutions' to this problem risible, at best.