Thomas Hobbes Quotes

Curiosity is a lust of the mind.
Thomas Hobbes
If I had read as much as other men I should have known no more than they.
Thomas Hobbes
Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.
Thomas Hobbes
Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.
Thomas Hobbes
Leisure is the mother of philosophy.
Thomas Hobbes
Appetite with an opinion of attaining is called hope the same without such opinion despair.
Thomas Hobbes
Give an inch he'll take an ell.
Thomas Hobbes
Faith is a gift of God which man can neither give nor take away by promise of rewards or menaces of torture.
Thomas Hobbes
Now I am about to take my last voyage a great leap in the dark.
Thomas Hobbes
Therefor I doubt not but, if it had been a thing contrary to any man’s right of dominion, or to the interest of men that have dominion, ‘that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two angles of a square,’ that doctrine should have been, if not disputed, yet by the burning of all books of geometry suppressed, as far as he whom it concerned was able.
Thomas Hobbes
Fact be virtuous, or vicious, as Fortune pleaseth
Thomas Hobbes
I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdity of my waking thoughts.
Thomas Hobbes
As if it were Injustice to sell dearer than we buy; or to give more to a man than he merits. 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
The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions. Defect in the understanding is ignorance; in reasoning, erroneous opinion.
Thomas Hobbes
Another doctrine repugnant to civil society, is that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of good and evil. For a man's conscience and his judgement are the same thing, and as the judgement, so also the conscience may be erroneous.
Thomas Hobbes
For such is the nature of man, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other mens at a distance.
Thomas Hobbes
The universe, the whole mass of things that are, is corporeal, that is to say, body, and hath the dimensions of magnitude, length, breadth and depth. Every part of the universe is ‘body’ and that which is not ‘body’ is no part of the universe, and because the universe is all, that which is no part of it is nothing, and consequently nowhere.
Thomas Hobbes
Silence is sometimes an argument of Consent
Thomas Hobbes
For, from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy, or kingdom of darkness, may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies; that is, to the old wives' fables in England concerning ghosts and spirits, and the feats they play in the night. 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 Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: for so did the papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen power.
Thomas Hobbes
The first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it.
Thomas Hobbes
And because the condition of man . . . is a condition of war of every one against every one, in which case every one is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in preserving his life against his enemies; it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing, even to one another's body. And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man, how strong or wise soever he be, of living out the time which nature ordinarily alloweth men to live. And consequently it is a precept, or general rule of reason: that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war. The first branch of which rule containeth the first and fundamental law of nature, which is: to seek peace and follow it. The second, the sum of the right of nature, which is: by all means we can to defend ourselves.
Thomas Hobbes
Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
Thomas Hobbes
Curiosity is the lust of the mind.
Thomas Hobbes
Now I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark
Thomas Hobbes
Felicity is a continual progress of the desire, from one object to another; the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter.
Thomas Hobbes
Hell is truth seen too late.
Thomas Hobbes
For it can never be that war shall preserve life, and peace destroy it.
Thomas Hobbes