Thomas Hobbes Quotes
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So that every Crime is a sinne; but not every sinne a Crime.
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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.
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From the same it proceedeth,that men gives different names, to one and the same thing, from the difference of their own passions: As they that approve a private opinion, call it Opinion; but they that mislike it, Haeresie: and yet haeresie signifies no more than private opinion; but has only agreater tincture of choler.
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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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By how much one man has more experience of things past, than another, by so much also he is more prudent, and his expectations the seldomer fail him.
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Words are the counters of wise men, but the money of fools.
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From whence it follows, that were the publique and private interest are most closely united, there is the publique most advanced.
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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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Those men that are so remissly governed that they dare take up arms to defend or introduce an opinion, are still in war, and their condition not peace, but only a cessation of arms for fear of one another, and they live as it were in the precincts of battle continually.
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No man can be judge to his own cause.
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If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun.
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A free man is he that, in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to.
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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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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.
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I think, therefore matter is capable of thinking.
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It is not easy to fall into any absurdity, unless it be by the length of an account; wherein he may perhaps forget what went before. For all men by nature reason alike, and well, when they have good principles.
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Prophecy is many times the principal cause of the events foretold.
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All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.
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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.
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Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.
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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.
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The Imagination that is raised in man (or any other creature imbued with the faculty of imagining) by words, or other voluntary signs, is that we generally call Understanding; and is common to Man and Beasts.
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Such is the nature of men, 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.