Thomas Hobbes Quotes
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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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To conclude, The Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; Reason is the pace; Encrease of Science, the way; and the Benefit of man-kind, the end.
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This is that law of the Gospel; whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them.
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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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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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If I read as many books as most men do, I would be as dull-witted as they are.
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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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I think, therefore matter is capable of thinking.
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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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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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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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Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.
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No man can be judge to his own cause.
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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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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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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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If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun.
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Words are the counters of wise men, but the money of fools.
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Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
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When it happeneth that a man signifieth unto us two contradictory opinions whereof the one is clearly and directly signified, andthe other either drawn from that by consequence, or not known to be contradictory to it; then (when he is not present to explicate himself better) we are to take the former of his opinions; for that is clearly signified to be his, and directly, whereas the other might proceed from error in the deduction, or ignorance of the repugnancy.
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Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men's preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men's wills such as men would have them.
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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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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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A man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force, to take away his life.