Thomas Hobbes Quotes
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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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A Covenant not to defend my selfe from force, by force, is always voyd.
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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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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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When a man tells me God hath spoken in a dream, I know he dreamt that God spoke to him.
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So that every Crime is a sinne; but not every sinne a Crime.
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Religions are like pills, which must be swallowed whole without chewing.
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And where men build on false grounds, the more they build, the greater is the ruine.
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As soon as a thought darts, I write it down.
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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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Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter.
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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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The reputation of power IS power.
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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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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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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 Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.
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Nature itself cannot err.
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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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Science [is] knowledge of the truth of Propositions and how things are called.
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Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind, as that though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he.
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Corporations are "worms in the body politic"
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All men, among themselves, are by nature equal. The inequality we now discern hath its spring from the civil law.