“I shall be glad then to find a hole to creep out of the world.”
Source: The treatise on human nature and that on liberty and necessity. With a suppl. to which is prefixed an account of his life and writings by the editor [P. Mallet].
“Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.”
Source: Leviathan
“Emulation is grief arising from seeing one's self, exceeded or excelled by his concurrent, together with hope to equal or exceed him in time to come, by his own ability. But envy is the same grief joined with pleasure conceived in the imagination of some ill-fortune that may befall him.”
Source: The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic: Part I, Human Nature, Part II, De Corpore Politico ; with Three Lives
“Obligation is thraldom, and thraldom is hateful.”
“Man is distinguished not only by his reason, but also by this singular passion, from all other animals.”
Source: The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury: Never Before Collected Together : To which is Prefixed, the Author's Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself, ...
“Government is necessary, not because man is naturally bad... but because man is by nature more individualistic than social.”
“How could a state be governed, or protected in its foreign relations if every individual remained free to obey or not to obey the law according to his private opinion.”
“Where there is no common power, there is no law”
Source: Leviathan
“Prudence is a presumption of the future, contracted from the experience of time past.”
Source: Leviathan
“The original of all great and lasting societies consisted not in the mutual good will men had toward each other, but in the mutual fear they had of each other.”
Source: Man and Citizen: De Homine and De Cive
“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.”
“And I profess still, that whatsoever the church of England (the church, I say, not every doctor) shall forbid me to say in matterof faith, I shall abstain from saying it, excepting this point, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for my sins. As for other doctrines, I think it unlawful, if the church define them, for any member of the church to contradict them.”
Source: The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury
“For if I should not believe all that is written by Historians, of the glorious acts of Alexander, or Caesar; I do not think the Ghost of Alexander, or Caesar, had any just cause to be offended; or any body else, but the Historian. If Livy say the Gods made once a Cow speak, and we believe it not; we distrust not God therein, but Livy. So that it is evident, that whatsoever we believe, upon no other reason, then what is drawn from authority of men only, and their writings; whether they be sent from God or not, is Faith in men only.”
Source: Hobbes: Leviathan: Revised student edition
“The Scripture was written to shew unto men the kingdom of God; and to prepare their minds to become his obedient subjects; leavingthe world, and the Philosophy thereof, to the disputation of men, for the exercising of their natural Reason.”
Source: Leviathan
“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.”
Source: The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic: Part I, Human Nature, Part II, De Corpore Politico ; with Three Lives
“Wisdom, properly so called, is nothing else but this: the perfect knowledge of the truth in all matters whatsoever.”
Source: The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury
“When it happeneth that a man signifieth unto us two contradictory opinions whereof the one is clearly and directly signified, andthe other either drawn from that by consequence, or not known to be contradictory to it; then (when he is not present to explicate himself better) we are to take the former of his opinions; for that is clearly signified to be his, and directly, whereas the other might proceed from error in the deduction, or ignorance of the repugnancy.”
Source: The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic: Part I, Human Nature, Part II, De Corpore Politico ; with Three Lives
“Seeing then that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth, had need to remember what every name he uses stands for; and to place it accordingly; or else he will find himself entangled in words, as a bird in lime-twigs; the more he struggles, the more belimed.”
Source: Leviathan
“True and false are attributes of speech not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood. Error theremay be, as when we expect that which shall not be; or suspect what has not been: but in neither case can a man be charged with untruth.”
“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.”
Source: Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity
“To conclude, The Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; Reason is the pace; Encrease of Science, the way; and the Benefit of man-kind, the end.”
Source: Annotated LEVIATHAN with English Grammar Exercises: by Thomas Hobbes (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)
“The cause of Sense, is the External Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense, either immediately, as in theTaste and Touch; or mediately, as in Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling: which pressure, by the mediation of Nerves, and other strings, and membranes of the body, continued inwards to the Brain, and Heart, causeth there a resistance, or counter- pressure, or endeavor of the heart, to deliver it self: which endeavor because Outward, seemeth to be some matter without.”
Source: Leviathan
“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?”
Source: Leviathan, Parts I and II
“[Necessity is] the sum of all things, which being now existent, conduce and concur to the production of that action hereafter, whereof if any one thing now were wanting, the effect could not be produced. This concourse of causes, whereof every one is determined to be such as it is by a like concourse of former causes, may well be called (in respect they were all set and ordered by the eternal causes of all things, God Almighty) the decree of God.”
Source: Of Liberty and Necessity; a treatise, wherein all controversy concerning predestination, election, free will, grace, merits, reprobation, etc. is fully decided and cleared. New edition
“If God bestowed immortality on every man then when he made him, and he made many to whom he never purposed to give his saving grace, what did his Lordship think that God gave any man immortality with purpose only to make him capable of immortal torments? It is a hard saying, and I think cannot piously be believed. I am sure it can never be proved by the canonical Scripture.”
Source: The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury: Never Before Collected Together : To which is Prefixed, the Author's Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself, ...
“When the nature of the thing is incomprehensible, I can acquiesce in the Scripture: but when the signification of words is incomprehensible, I cannot acquiesce in the authority of a Schoolman.”
Source: The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury: Never Before Collected Together : To which is Prefixed, the Author's Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself, ...
“I mean by the universe, the aggregate of all things that have being in themselves; and so do all men else. And because God has a being, it follows that he is either the whole universe, or part of it. Nor does his Lordship go about to disprove it, but only seems to wonder at it.”
Source: The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury
“To say that God is an incorporeal substance, is to say in effect there is no God at all. What alleges he against it, but the School-divinity which I have already answered? Scripture he can bring none, because the word incorporeal is not found in Scripture.”
Source: The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury
“Can it then be doubted, but that God, who is infinitely fine Spirit, and withal intelligent, can make and change all species and kind of body as he pleaseth? But I dare not say, that this is the way by which God Almighty worketh, because it is past my apprehension: yet it serves very well to demonstrate, that the omnipotence of God implieth no contradiction.”
Source: Leviathan, Parts I and II - Revised Edition
“But his Lordship [tells]us that God is wholly here, and wholly there, and wholly every where; because he has no parts. I cannot comprehend nor conceive this. For methinks it implies also that the whole world is also in the whole God, and in every part of God. Norcan I find anything of this in the Scripture. If I could find it there, I could believe it; and if I could find it in the public doctrine of the Church, I could easily abstain from contradicting it.”
“To say God spake or appeared as he is in his own nature, is to deny his Infiniteness, Invisibility, Incomprehensibility.”
Source: Leviathan
“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.”
Source: Leviathan
“The Imagination that is raised in man (or any other creature imbued with the faculty of imagining) by words, or other voluntary signs, is that we generally call Understanding; and is common to Man and Beasts.”
“A Law of Nature, (Lex Naturalis) is a Precept, or general Rule, found out by Reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit, that, by which he thinketh it may be best preserved.”
Source: Leviathan, Parts I and II
“To speak impartially, both sayings are very true: that man to man is a kind of God; and that man to man is an arrant wolf. The first is true, if we compare citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we compare cities.”
Source: Man and Citizen: De Homine and De Cive
“In sum, all actions and habits are to be esteemed good or evil by their causes and usefulness in reference to the commonwealth, and not by their mediocrity, nor by their being commended. For several men praise several customs, and, contrarily, what one calls vice, another calls virtue, as their present affections lead them.”
Source: Behemoth or The Long Parliament
“But they that hold God to be [an incorporeal substance]do absolutely make God to be nothing at all. But how? Were they atheists? No. For though by ignorance of the consequence they said that which was equivalent to atheism, yet in their hearts they thought God a substanceSo that this atheism by consequence is a very easy thing to be fallen into, even by the most godly men of the church.”
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
Source: The Essential Leviathan: A Modernized Edition
“Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men's preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men's wills such as men would have them.”
Source: Of Liberty and Necessity; a treatise, wherein all controversy concerning predestination, election, free will, grace, merits, reprobation, etc. is fully decided and cleared. New edition
“As, in Sense, that which is really within us, is (as I have said before) only Motion, caused by the action of external objects, but in appearance; to the Sight, Light and Color; to the Ear, Sound; to the Nostril, Odor, &c.”
Source: The Ethics of Hobbes: As Contained in Selections from His Works
“There be as many persons of a king, as there be petty constables in his kingdom. And so there are, or else he cannot be obeyed. But I never said that a king, and every one of his persons, are the same substance.”
Source: Leviathan, Parts I and II - Revised Edition
“Nature itself cannot err”
“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.”
Source: The Moral and Political Works To which is Prefixed the Autors Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself ... Illustr. by the Ed. - London 1750
“It is not easy to fall into any absurdity, unless it be by the length of an account; wherein he may perhaps forget what went before. For all men by nature reason alike, and well, when they have good principles.”
Source: The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury: Never Before Collected Together : To which is Prefixed, the Author's Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself, ...
“The first cause of Absurd conclusions I ascribe to the want of Method.”
Source: The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury: Never Before Collected Together : To which is Prefixed, the Author's Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself, ...
“Curiosity is the lust of the mind.”
“The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.”
“All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.”
“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.”
Source: Leviathan, Parts I and II
“The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.”
Source: Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil
