Thomas Hobbes Quotes
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Science [is] knowledge of the truth of Propositions and how things are called.
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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.
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The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only.
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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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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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Leisure is the mother of philosophy; and commonwealth, the mother of peace and leisure.
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So that every Crime is a sinne; but not every sinne a Crime.
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As a draft-animal is yoked in a wagon, even so the spirit is yoked in this body.
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[Necessity is] the sum of all things, which being now existent, conduce and concur to the production of that action hereafter, whereof if any one thing now were wanting, the effect could not be produced. This concourse of causes, whereof every one is determined to be such as it is by a like concourse of former causes, may well be called (in respect they were all set and ordered by the eternal causes of all things, God Almighty) the decree of God.
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There is more in Mersenne than in all the universities together.
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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, &c., were called heresies.
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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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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.
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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?
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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.
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And for Incoherent Speech, it was amongst the Gentiles taken for one sort of Prophecy, because the Prophets of their Oracles, intoxicated with a spirit, or vapor from the cave of the Pythian Oracle at Delphi, were for a time really mad, and spake like mad-men; of whoose loose words a sense might be made to fit any event, in such sort, as all bodies are said to be made of Materia prima.
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To be seduced by Orators, as a Monarch by Flatterers.
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Whatsoever accidents or qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they are not there, but are seemings and apparitions only. The things that really are in the world without us, are those motions by which these seemings are caused. And this is the great deception of sense, which also is by sense to be corrected. For as sense telleth me, when I see directly, that the colour seemeth to be in the object; so also sense telleth me, when I see by reflection, that colour is not in the object.
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It's not the pace of life I mind. It's the sudden stop at the end.
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Ignorance of the law is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the laws to which he is subject.
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Corporations are may lesser commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man.
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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.
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Subjects have no greater liberty in a popular than in a monarchial state. That which deceives them is the equal participation of command.