Thomas Hobbes Quotes
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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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Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
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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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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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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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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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For to accuse requires less eloquence, such is man's nature, than to excuse; and condemnation, than absolution, more resembles justice.
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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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Prudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men in those things they equally apply themselves unto.
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Prudence is a presumption of the future, contracted from the experience of time past.
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Leisure can be one of the Mothers of Philosophy.
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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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Curiosity draws a man from consideration of the effect, to seek the cause.
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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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The first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it.
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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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No mans error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.
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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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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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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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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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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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For after the subject is removed or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the things seen, though more obscure than when we see it...Imagination, therefore, is nothing more than decaying sense.
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I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.