Thomas Hobbes Quotes
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To be seduced by Orators, as a Monarch by Flatterers.
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And seeing every man is presumed to do all things in order to his own benefit, no man is a fit Arbitrator in his own cause.
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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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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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If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun.
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No man can be judge to his own cause.
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From what cause the rite of baptism first proceeded is not expressed formally in the scripture, but it may be probably thought to be an imitation of the law of Moses concerning leprosy, wherein the leprous man was commanded to be kept out of the camp of Israel for a certain time, after which time being judged by the priest to be clean, he was admitted into the camp after a solemn washing. And this may therefore be a type of the washing in baptism, wherein such men as are cleansed of the leprosy of Sin by Faith, are received into the church with the solemnity of baptism.
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Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
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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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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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I think, therefore matter is capable of thinking.
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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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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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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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Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.
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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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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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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.
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If men are naturally in a state of war, why do they always carry arms and why do they have keys to lock their doors?
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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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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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Words are the counters of wise men, but the money of fools.
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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.
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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.