Thomas Hobbes - War Quotes

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When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death.

Thomas Hobbes
During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.

Thomas Hobbes
Whereas some have attributed the dominion [of the family] to the man only, as being of the more excellent sex; they misreckon in it. For there is not always that difference of strength, or prudence between the man and the woman, as that the right can be determined without war.

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

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