Quotes By Thomas Hobbes

The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.

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.

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.

They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that dislike it, heresy; and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.

The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is a lust of the mind.

All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called "Facts". They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.

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.

A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him.

He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy.

The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.

Such truth, as opposeth no man's profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome.

It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.

The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life.

I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.

The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only.

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.

In the state of nature profit is the measure of right.

The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.

Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation.

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.

Fear of things invisible in the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.

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.

Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter.

The Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.

Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy.

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.

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.

Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.

Words are the money of fools.