“A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.”
Source: Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil
“The world is governed by opinion.”
Source: Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity
“It's my turn, to take a leap into the darkness!”
“Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Source: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan (Longman Library of Primary Sources in Philosophy)
“A free man is he that, in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to.”
“Prudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men in those things they equally apply themselves unto.”
Source: Leviathan
“By this we may understand, there be two sorts of knowledge, whereof the one is nothing else but sense, or knowledge original (as I have said at the beginning of the second chapter), and remembrance of the same; the other is called science or knowledge of the truth of propositions, and how things are called, and is derived from understanding.”
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, ...
“Scientia potentia est, sed parva; quia scientia egregia rara est, nec proinde apparens nisi paucissimis, et in paucis rebus. Scientiae enim ea natura est, ut esse intelligi non possit, nisi ab illis qui sunt scientia praediti.”
Source: Opera philosophica quae latine scripsit omnia: in unum corpusnunc primum collecta studio et labore Gulielmi Molesworth
“The end of knowledge is power ... the scope of all speculation is the performing of some action or thing to be done.”
Source: The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury
“And as to the faculties of the mind, setting aside the arts grounded upon words, and especially that skill of proceeding upon generall, and infallible rules, called Science; which very few have, and but in few things; as being not a native faculty, born within us; nor attained, (as Prudence,) while we look after somewhat else.”
Source: Annotated LEVIATHAN with English Grammar Exercises: by Thomas Hobbes (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)
“Desire of praise disposeth to laudable actions.”
Source: Leviathan
“I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.”
“Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter.”
Source: Leviathan
“Such truth, as opposeth no man's profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome.”
“He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy.”
Source: Leviathan: Or, The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill
“Geometry is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind.”
“For it is not the shape, but their use, that makes them angels.”
Source: Leviathan: Top 100 Classic Novels
“For it is with the mysteries of our religion, as with wholesome pills for the sick, which swallowed whole, have the virtue to cure; but chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect.”
“Appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair.”
Source: The Essential Leviathan: A Modernized Edition
“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.”
Source: Leviathan
“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.”
“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.”
“To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.”
Source: Leviathan
“Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the conversation, and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify our appetites, and aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different.”
Source: The Essential Leviathan: A Modernized Edition
“Corporations are may lesser commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man.”
Source: Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil
“Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases; rashness, with mischance; injustice; with violence of enemies; pride, with ruin; cowardice, with oppression; and rebellion, with slaughter.”
Source: Leviathan - Revised Edition
“To be seduced by Orators, as a Monarch by Flatterers.”
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, ...
“Reason is the Soul of the Law.”
Source: Thomas Hobbes: Writings on Common Law and Hereditary Right: A Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Student, of the Common Laws of England. Questions Relative to Hereditary Right
“Ambition, and Covetousnesse are Passions that are perpetually incumbent, and pressing.”
“A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him.”
Source: The Peloponnesian War
“Hell is Truth Seen Too Late.”
“Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.”
“For it can never be that war shall preserve life, and peace destroy it.”
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, ...
“It's not the pace of life I mind. It's the sudden stop at the end.”
“If men are naturally in a state of war, why do they always carry arms and why do they have keys to lock their doors?”
“As a draft-animal is yoked in a wagon, even so the spirit is yoked in this body”
“It is many times with a fraudulent Design that men stick their corrupt Doctrine with the Cloves of other mens Wit.”
Source: Leviathan
“By consequence, or train of thoughts, I understand that succession of one thought to another which is called, to distinguish it from discourse in words, mental discourse. When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently.”
Source: Leviathan, Parts I and II - Revised Edition
“And therefore in geometry (which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind), men begin at settling the significations of their words; which settling of significations, they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning.”
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, ...
“For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself”
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
“Do not that to another, which thou wouldst not have done to thyself.”
Source: Leviathan Or The Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil
“If I had read as much as other men I would have known no more than they.”
“If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.”
Source: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan (Longman Library of Primary Sources in Philosophy)
“Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.”
Source: Leviathan: Or, The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill
“No mans error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.”
Source: The Essential Leviathan: A Modernized Edition
“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.”
Source: Leviathan, Parts I and II
“The power of a man is his present means to obtain some future apparent good.”
“It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law”
Source: Thomas Hobbes: Writings on Common Law and Hereditary Right: A Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Student, of the Common Laws of England. Questions Relative to Hereditary Right
“Opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotion to what men fear, and talking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth the natural seeds of 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.”
