Quotes by Thomas Hobbes

Words are the money of fools.

The life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Fear of things invisible in the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.

Whatsoever is the object of any man's Appetite or Desire; that is it which he for his part calleth Good: and the object of his Hate and Aversion, evil.

What reason is there that he which laboreth much, and, sparing the fruits of his labor, consumeth little, should be more charged than he that, living idly, getteth little and spendeth all he gets, seeing the one hath no more protection from the commonwealth than the other?

Appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair.

Geometry is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind.

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.

That wee have of Geometry, which is the mother of all Naturall Science, wee are not indebted for it to the Schools.

Every man may think his own cause just till it be heard and judged.

Life is nasty, brutish, and short.

Subjects have no greater liberty in a popular than in a monarchial state. That which deceives them is the equal participation of command.

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.

The Pacts and Covenants, by which the parts of this Body Politique were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that Fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced by God in the Creation.

Prudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men in those things they equally apply themselves unto.

Competition of praise inclineth to a reverence of antiquity. For men contend with the living, not with the dead.

And therefore in geometry (which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind), men begin at settling the significations of their words; which settling of significations, they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning.

The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.

Humans are driven by a perpetual and restless desire of power.

Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.

The best men are the least suspicious of fraudulent purposes.

Hell is truth seen too late.

When two, or more men, know of one and the same fact, they are said to be CONSCIOUS of it one to another; which is as much as to know it together.

Because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdities of my waking thoughts, I am well satisfied that being awake, I know I dream not; though when I dream, I think myself awake.

No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute Knowledge of Fact.

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.

For to accuse requires less eloquence, such is man's nature, than to excuse; and condemnation, than absolution, more resembles justice.

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.

For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs... why may we not say, that all Automata (Engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life?

How could a state be governed, or protected in its foreign relations if every individual remained free to obey or not to obey the law according to his private opinion.

Faith is a gift of God, which man can neither give nor take away by promise of rewards or menace of torture.

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.

Ignorance of the law is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the laws to which he is subject.

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, andc.

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.

If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.

To understand this for sense it is not required that a man should be a geometrician or a logician, but that he should be mad.

To be seduced by Orators, as a Monarch by Flatterers.

A democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orators. The people are so readily moved by demagogues that control must be exercised by the government over speech and press.

Because silver and gold have their value from the matter itself, they have first this privilege, that the value of them cannot be altered by the power of one, nor of a few commonwealths, as being a common measure of the commodities of all places. But base money may easily be enhanced or abased.

Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases; rashness, with mischance; injustice; with violence of enemies; pride, with ruin; cowardice, with oppression; and rebellion, with slaughter.

Heresy is a word which, when it is used without passion, signifies a private opinion. So the different sects of the old philosophers, Academians, Peripatetics, Epicureans, Stoics, andc., were called heresies.

Silence is sometimes an argument of Consent.

Religions are like pills, which must be swallowed whole without chewing.

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

True and false are attributes of speech not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood. Error theremay be, as when we expect that which shall not be; or suspect what has not been: but in neither case can a man be charged with untruth.

As a draft-animal is yoked in a wagon, even so the spirit is yoked in this body.

To speak impartially, both sayings are very true: that man to man is a kind of God; and that man to man is an arrant wolf. The first is true, if we compare citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we compare cities.

Ambition, and Covetousnesse are Passions that are perpetually incumbent, and pressing.

The end of knowledge is power ... the scope of all speculation is the performing of some action or thing to be done.

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

A Covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void. For... no man can transfer or lay down his Right to save himself from Death.

I mean by the universe, the aggregate of all things that have being in themselves; and so do all men else. And because God has a being, it follows that he is either the whole universe, or part of it. Nor does his Lordship go about to disprove it, but only seems to wonder at it.

And as in other things, so in men, not the seller, but the buyer determines the Price.

Let a man (as most men do) rate themselves as the highest Value they can; yet their true Value is no more than it is esteemed by others.

For all uniting of strength by private men, is, if for evil intent, unjust; if for intent unknown, dangerous to the Publique, and unjustly concealed.

The oath adds nothing to the obligation. For a covenant, if lawful, binds in the sight of God, without the oath, as much as with it; if unlawful, bindeth not at all, though it be confirmed with an oath.

The value or worth of a man is, as of all other things, his price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power.

No mans error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.

For it is not the shape, but their use, that makes them angels.

Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.

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.

Baptism is the sacrament of allegiance of them that are to be received into the Kingdom of God, that is to say, into Eternal life, that is to say, to Remission of Sin. For as Eternal life was lost by the committing, so it is recovered by the remitting of men's sins.

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.

Man is distinguished not only by his reason, but also by this singular passion, from all other animals.

If this superstitious fear of Spirits were taken away, and with it, Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted then they are for civill Obedience.

Reason is the Soul of the Law.

The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is a lust of the mind.

The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only.

Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon with them, but they are the money of fools.

There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.

Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter.

The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.

A man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force, to take away his life.

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.

Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.

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

Such truth, as opposeth no man's profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome.

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

Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy.

The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life.

The Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.

All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.

It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.

Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation.

I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.

The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.

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