Words matter. These are the best Thomas Hobbes Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy.
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.
War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known.
In the state of nature profit is the measure of right.
Such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves.
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.
The condition of man… is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.
Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy.
Such truth, as opposeth no man’s profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome.
A man’s conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.
The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only.
Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation.
Fear of things invisible in the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.
I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.
No man’s error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.
Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.
Curiosity is the lust of the mind.
Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.
The disembodied spirit is immortal; there is nothing of it that can grow old or die. But the embodied spirit sees death on the horizon as soon as its day dawns.
It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.
That a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defense of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.
Prudence is but experience, which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.
All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called ‘Facts’. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.
Words are the money of fools.
