Thomas Hobbes Quotes
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Every man may think his own cause just till it be heard and judged.
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During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.
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For WAR, consisteth not in Battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to content by Battle is sufficiently known.... So the nature of War, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.
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And this Feare of things invisible, is the naturall Seed of that, which every one in himself calleth Religion; and in them that worship, or feare that Power otherwise than they do, Superstition.
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... it is one thing to desire, another to be in capacity fit for what we desire.
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Prudence is a presumption of the future, contracted from the experience of time past.
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Baptism is the sacrament of allegiance of them that are to be received into the Kingdom of God, that is to say, into Eternal life, that is to say, to Remission of Sin. For as Eternal life was lost by the committing, so it is recovered by the remitting of men's sins.
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The first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it.
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And if a man consider the original of this great Ecclesiastical Dominion, he will easily perceive, that the Papacy , is no other than the Ghost of the deceased Romane Empire , sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: For so did the Papacy start up on a Sudden out of the Ruines of that Heathen Power.
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Immortality is a belief grounded upon other men's sayings, that they knew it supernaturally; or that they knew those who knew them that knew others that knew it supernaturally.
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Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
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There is no action of man in this life that is not the beginning of so long a chain of consequences as no human providence is high enough to give a man a prospect in the end. And in this chain, there are linked together both pleasing and unpleasing events in such manner as he that will do anything for his pleasure must engage himself to suffer all the pains annexed to it.
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No mans error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.
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Nature (the Art whereby God hath made and governs the World) is by the Art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an Artificial Animal. For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within; 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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A Covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void. For... no man can transfer or lay down his Right to save himself from Death.
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For all laws are general judgements, or sentences of the legislator; as also every particular judgement is a law to him whose case is judged.
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Faith is a gift of God, which man can neither give nor take away by promise of rewards or menace of torture.
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Obligation is thraldom, and thraldom is hateful.
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Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter.
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The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.
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The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.
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Of all Discourse , governed by desire of Knowledge, there is at last an End , either by attaining, or by giving over.
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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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The oath adds nothing to the obligation. For a covenant, if lawful, binds in the sight of God, without the oath, as much as with it; if unlawful, bindeth not at all, though it be confirmed with an oath.