Thomas Hobbes Quotes
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Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind or imagined from tales publicly allowed, is religion; not allowed, superstition.
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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?
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To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.
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The most part of men, though they have the use of reasoning a little way, as in numbering to some degree; yet it serves them to little use in common life; in which they govern themselves, some better, some worse, according to their differences of experience, quickness of memory, and inclinations to several ends; but specially according to good or evil fortune, and the errors of one another.
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Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter.
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When a man tells me God hath spoken in a dream, I know he dreamt that God spoke to him.
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They that are discontented under monarchy, call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy, call it oligarchy: so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy, call it anarchy, which signifies the want of government; and yet I think no man believes, that want of government, is any new kind of government.
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Religions are like pills, which must be swallowed whole without chewing.
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The end of knowledge is power ... the scope of all speculation is the performing of some action or thing to be done.
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And where men build on false grounds, the more they build, the greater is the ruine.
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So that every Crime is a sinne; but not every sinne a Crime.
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As soon as a thought darts, I write it down.
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Nature itself cannot err.
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Another doctrine repugnant to Civill Society, is that whatsoever a man does against his Conscience, is Sinne ; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of Good and Evill. For a man's Conscience and his Judgement are the same thing, and as the Judgement, so also the Conscience may be erroneous.
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The reputation of power IS power.
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Science [is] knowledge of the truth of Propositions and how things are called.
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When the nature of the thing is incomprehensible, I can acquiesce in the Scripture: but when the signification of words is incomprehensible, I cannot acquiesce in the authority of a Schoolman.
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Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry... no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
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In a Democracy, look how many Demagogs that is how many powerful Orators there are with the people.
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But yet they that have no Science , are in better, and nobler condition with their naturall Prudence; than men, that by their mis-reasoning, or by trusting them that reason wrong, fall upon false and absurd generall rules.
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All men, among themselves, are by nature equal. The inequality we now discern hath its spring from the civil law.
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Corporations are "worms in the body politic"
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There is more in Mersenne than in all the universities together.
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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.