Thomas Hobbes Quotes
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Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
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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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Love is a person's idea about his/her needs in other person what you are attracted to.
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If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun.
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And as to the faculties of the mind, setting aside the arts grounded upon words, and especially that skill of proceeding upon generall, and infallible rules, called Science; which very few have, and but in few things; as being not a native faculty, born within us; nor attained, (as Prudence,) while we look after somewhat else.
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Leisure is the mother of philosophy; and commonwealth, the mother of peace and leisure.
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For it is not the bare Words, but the Scope of the writer that giveth true light, by which any writing is to bee interpreted; and they that insist upon single Texts, without considering the main Designe, can derive no thing from them clearly; but rather by casting atomes of Scripture, as dust before mens eyes, make everything more obscure than it is; an ordinary artifice of those who seek not the truth, but their own advantage.
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It is manifest therefore that they who have sovereign power, are immediate rulers of the church under Christ, and all others but subordinate to them. If that were not, but kings should command one thing upon pain of death, and priests another upon pain of damnation, it would be impossible that peace and religion should stand together.
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No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute Knowledge of Fact.
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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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This I know; God cannot sin, because his doing a thing makes it just, and consequently, no sin.... And therefore it is blasphemy to say, God can sin; but to say, that God can so order the world, as a sin may be necessarily caused thereby in a man, I do not see how it is any dishonor to him.
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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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Christian Kings may erre in deducing a Consequence, but who shall Judge?
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Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.
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Covenants without swords are but words.
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Prudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men in those things they equally apply themselves unto.
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Power as is really divided, and as dangerously to all purposes, by sharing with another an Indirect Power, as a Direct one.
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But if one Subject giveth Counsell to another, to do anything contrary to the Lawes, whether that Counsell proceed from evil intention, or from ignorance onely, it is punishable by the Common-wealth; because igorance of the Law, is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the Lawes to which he is subject.
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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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Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases; rashness, with mischance; injustice; with violence of enemies; pride, with ruin; cowardice, with oppression; and rebellion, with slaughter.
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When two, or more men, know of one and the same fact, they are said to be CONSCIOUS of it one to another; which is as much as to know it together.
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True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood.
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... it is one thing to desire, another to be in capacity fit for what we desire.
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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.