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Hobbes Quotes

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Hobbes Quotes

“We have evoked the curious presence, in the empty city, of the armed guards and of the two characters whose identity it is now time to reveal. Francesca Falk has drawn attention to the fact that the two figures standing near the cathedral are wearing the characteristic beaked mask of plague doctors. Horst Bredekamp had spotted the detail, but had not drawn any conclusions from it; Falk instead rightly stresses the political (or biopolitical) significance that the doctors acquired during an epidemic. Their presence in the emblem recalls 'the selection and the exclusion, and the connection between epidemic, health, and sovereignity'. Like the mass of plague victims, the unrepresentable multitude can be represented only through the guards who monitor its obedience and the doctors who treat it. It dwells in the city, but only as the object of the duties and concerns of those who exercise the sovereignity. This is what Hobbes clearly affirms in chapter 13 of De Cive, when, after having recalled that 'all the duties of those who rule are comprised in this single maxim,"the safety of the people is the supreme law"', he felt the need to specify that 'by people we do not understand here a civil person, nor the city itself that governs, but the multitude of citizens who are governed', and that by 'safety' we should understand not only 'the simple preservation of life, but (to the extent that is possible) that of a happy life'. While perfectly illustrating the paradoxical status of the Hobbesian multitude, the emblem of the frontispiece is also a courier that announces the biopolitical turn that sovereign power was preparing to make.”

PeopleHappinessSafetyHobbesMultitudeBiopolitics
Book:The Omnibus Homo Sacer
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“I have asserted that Hobbes's psychological analysis of the human mind has no rational connection with his theory of the State. But it has, of course, an emotional connection; one can say that both doctrines belong naturally to the same temperament. Materialistic determinism and absolutist government fit into the same scheme of life. And this theory of the State shows the same lack of balance which is a general characteristic of philosophers after the Renaissance. Hobbes merely exaggerates one aspect of the good State. In doing so he developed a particularly lamentable theory of the relation between Church and State.”

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Book:For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays Ancient & Modern
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“It is extraordinary that a philosophy so essentially revolutionary as that of Hobbes, and so similar to that of contemporary Russia, should ever have been supposed to give any support to Toryism. But its ambiguity is largely responsible for its success. Hobbes was a revolutionary in thought and a timid conservative in action; and his theory of government is congenial to that type of person who is conservative from prudence but revolutionary in his dreams. This type of person is not altogether uncommon. In Hobbes there are symptoms of the same mentality as Nietzsche: his belief in violence is a confession of weakness. Hobbes's violence is of a type that often appeals to gentle people. His specious effect of unity between a very simple theory of sense perception and an equally simple theory of government is of a kind that will always be popular because it appears to be intellectual but is really emotional, and therefore very soothing to lazy minds.”

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Book:For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays Ancient & Modern
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“The familiar picture of man in the last centuries was one of a rational being whose actions were determined by his self-interest and the ability to act according to it. Even writers like Hobbes, who recognized lust for power and hostility as driving forces in man, explained the existence of these forces as a logical result of self-interest: since men are equal and thus have the same wish for happiness, and since there is not enough wealth to satisfy them all to the same extent, they necessarily fight against each other and want power to secure the future enjoyment of what they have at present. But Hobbe's picture became outmoded.”

ReasonHobbesLust For Power1941
Book:Escape from Freedom
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“The philosophy of Hobbes, it is true, contains nothing of modern race doctrines, which not only stir up the mob, but in their totalitarian form outline very clearly the forms of organization through which humanity could carry the prerequisite for all race doctrines, that is, the exclusion in principle of the idea of humanity which constitutes the sole regulating idea of international law. With the assumption that foreign politics is necessarily outside of the human contract, engaged in the perpetual war of all against all, which is the law of the "state of nature," Hobbes affords the best possible theoretical foundation for those naturalistic ideologies which hold nations to be tribes, separated from each other by nature, without any connection whatever, unconscious of the solidarity of mankind and having in common only the instinct for self-preservation which man shares with the animal world. If the idea of humanity, of which the most conclusive symbol is the common origin of the human species, is no longer valid, then nothing is more plausible than a theory according to which brown, yellow, or black races are descended from some other species of apes than the white race, and that all together are predestined by nature to war against each other until they have disappeared from the face of the earth.”

EvolutionImperialismBourgeoisieHobbes1967Race Theory
Book:The Origins of Totalitarianism
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“It is significant that modern believers in power are in complete accord with the philosophy of the only great thinker who ever attempted to derive public good from private interest and who, for the sake of private good, conceived and outlined a Commonwealth whose basis and ultimate end is the accumulation of power. Hobbes, indeed, is the only great philosopher to whom the bourgeoisie can rightly and exclusively lay claim.... .... The consistency of this conclusion is in no way altered by the remarkable fact that for some three hundred years there was neither a sovereign who would "convert this Truth of Speculation into the Utility of Practice," nor a bourgeoisie politically conscious and economically mature enough openly to adopt Hobbes's philosophy of power.”

ImperialismPolitical PowerBourgeoisieHobbes1967
Book:The Origins of Totalitarianism
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“CALVIN: Hey, I got some mail! It's a Valentine card. HOBBES: From Susie Derkins! CALVIN: It says "Please be my Valentine." HOBBES: You're Susie's Valentine! CALVIN: I'm not her Valentine just because I got this in the mail, am I? Does the Post Master General know about this? HOBBES: Calvin and Susie, sitting in a tree-ee! Kay-eye-ess-ess-eye-en-gee! CALVIN: I don't have the KISS her, do I?! Is that what Valentines do??! Oh, gross! HOBBES: First comes lo-ove, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage! CALVIN: This can't be happening! I need a lawyer! She can't make me be her Valentine! HOBBES: Here she comes! Here comes Susie! SUSIE: Hi, Calvin. CALVIN: Get away from me! I'm not your Valentine! Take your card back! Eww! Girls! YECCHH! SUSIE: That card wasn't for YOU, you Moron. Didn't you read the back of the envelope? CALVIN: "Calvin, please give this to Hobbes." HOBBES?! HOBBES: Me? Really? Hot dog! Smooch City, here I come!”

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Book:The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes
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“With the growth of civilisation in Europe, and with the revival of letters and of science in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the ethical and intellectual criticism of theology once more recommenced, and arrived at a temporary resting-place in the confessions of the various reformed Protestant sects in the sixteenth century; almost all of which, as soon as they were strong enough, began to persecute those who carried criticism beyond their own limit. But the movement was not arrested by these ecclesiastical barriers, as their constructors fondly imagined it would be; it was continued, tacitly or openly, by Galileo, by Hobbes, by Descartes, and especially by Spinoza, in the seventeenth century; by the English Freethinkers, by Rousseau, by the French Encyclopaedists, and by the German Rationalists, among whom Lessing stands out a head and shoulders taller than the rest, throughout the eighteenth century; by the historians, the philologers, the Biblical critics, the geologists, and the biologists in the nineteenth century, until it is obvious to all who can see that the moral sense and the really scientific method of seeking for truth are once more predominating over false science. Once more ethics and theology are parting company.”

ScienceCivilizationEuropeCriticismPersecutionScience And ReligionScience Vs ReligionHobbesSpinozaDescartesRousseauGalileoProtestantGalileo GalileiBaruch SpinozaDiderotGeologistsRene DescartesRené DescartesThomas HobbesBaron D HolbachD HolbachDenis DiderotJean MeslierLessingPaul Henri D HolbachGotthold Ephraim LessingGotthold LessingJean Jacque RousseauMeslier
Book:The Evolution Of Theology: An Anthropological Study
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“A precursor to the Social Darwinists, Hobbes argued from th premise that the primordial human condition was a war fought by each against each, so brutal and incesssant that it was impossible to develop industry or even agriculture or the arts while that condition persisted. It's this description that culmintes in his famous epithet "And the life of man, solitary, poor, brutish, and short." It was a fiction to which he brought to bear another fiction, that of the social contract by which men agree to submit to rules and a presiding authority, surrendering their right to ravage each other for the sake of their own safety. The contract was not a bond of affection or identification, bot a culture or religion binding togetehr a civilization, only a convenience. Men, in his view, as in that of many other European writers of the period, are stark, mechanical creatures, windup soldiers social only by strategy and not by nature...”

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Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“He never become a true professional, though, and fell into traps of the sort that enthusiastic amateurs often do. These included pursuing impossible problems like trying to square the circle, trisect an angle, and double a cube, each of which Hobbes erroneously thought he had achieved.”

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Book:The Great Equations: Breakthroughs in Science from Pythagoras to Heisenberg
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“This a sacred rule we find Among the nicest of mankind, (Which never might exception brook From Hobbes even down to Bolingbroke,) To doubt of facts, however true, Unless they know the causes too.”

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Book:The poetical works of Charles Churcill: With memoir, critical dissertation, and explanatory notes
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“I'd always enjoyed the comics more, and felt that as long as I was unemployed it would be a good chance to pursue that and see what response I could get from asyndicate, as I didn't have anything to lose at that point. So I drew up a comic strip - this was in 1980 - and sent it off and got rejected. I continued that for five years with different comic strip examples 'til finally Calvin and Hobbes came together. But it's been a long road.”

YearsLongDifferentWould BeTogetherFeltLosesChanceFiveExampleResponsePursueComicEnjoyedFive YearsRejectedUnemployedGood ChanceHobbesComic StripsLong Road
Author:Bill Watterson
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“Facebook is not ideologically neutral. In fact, it emerges from a very particular world view which we can trace back to Hobbes. I discovered this by examining the profile of Zuckerberg's fellow board members who, unlike him, are a very interesting bunch and, I suspect, the real power behind the poster boy.”

WorldRealFactsInterestingViewsBehindsBoysParticularMembersFellowsBunchBoardsSuspectsVery InterestingProfilePostersExaminingWorld ViewReal PowerHobbesZuckerbergBoard Members
Author:Tom Hodgkinson
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“The fact is that philosophy has been a decisive source of inspiration in all the great crises that Europe has faced. It has been so in the time that preceded the fall of the Roman Empire, when Augustine of Hippo delineated the features of a new spiritual civilization; in the age of religious wars, when Descartes and Hobbes established the principles of modern science and politics; and at the turn of the French Revolution, interpreted by Kant and Hegel as an event destined to change the history of the world.”

WorldHas BeensWarPhilosophyFactsInspirationAgeSpiritualTurnsFallReligiousPrinciplesModernEventsSourceRevolutionCivilizationEuropeCrisisFeaturesEmpiresDestinedWorld HistoryRoman EmpireModern ScienceFrench RevolutionHegelAugustineHippoHobbesSource Of InspirationReligious Wars
Author:Roberto Esposito
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“It would be fun too to put some of the great philosophers and political scientists of the past couple centuries into a time machine, have them look at the world today, and see what they think. Imagine Schumpeter, Malthus, Hobbes, Nietzsche, Marx, and more! That would be good fun.”

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Author:Scott D. Anthony
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“We want everything in a hurry because our primary aim must be survival in the short term. Long term thinking has seemed like a luxury in human history because lives were shorter, but with our increased longevity we have to figure out what to DO with all our time, and to pace ourselves to achieve things that we want. Hobbes might have been right when he originally wrote that life is 'nasty, poor, brutish and short', but today we are AWASH with time.”

ThinkingLongTodayTermPoorAchieveSurvivalAimLong TermLongevityShort TermHobbes
Author:Tom Butler-Bowdon
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“I am a super nostalgic person in general. I think part of the reason that I'm in the film business is because, to me, when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, it seemed like the most appropriate career I could have where I knew I wouldn't have to kill the little kid in me. I get to play around, and that's amazing. There's a quote from Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes that I always found really interesting. He said, "Anyone who is nostalgic about their childhood never had one." And I always found it fascinating.”

ThinkingTryingReasonKidsFilmInterestingChildhoodLittle KidReally InterestingNostalgicHobbes
Author:Jordan Vogt-Roberts
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“The theory of social contracts extends as far back as Plato. However, it was the great 18th century social philosophers John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who brought the concept of a social contract between citizens and governments sharply into political thinking, paving the way for popular democracy and constitutional republicanism.”

ThinkingWayGovernmentPoliticalSocialDemocracyCenturyCitizensConceptsPhilosopherContracts18th CenturyHobbesSocial ContractRepublicanismPavingPolitical ThinkingPaving The WayJean Jacques RousseauJacques Rousseau
Author:Simon Mainwaring
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“Ms. Wormwood: Calvin, can you tell us what Lewis and Clark did? Calvin: No, but I can recite the secret superhero origin of each member of Captain Napalm's Thermonuclear League of Liberty. Ms. Wormwood: See me after class, Calvin. Calvin: [retrospectively] I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information.”

I CanSecretLibertyClassInformationMembersCommandDumbUselessLeagueCaptainsSuperheroHobbesNapalmUseless InformationWormwoodLewis And Clark
Author:Bill Watterson
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“Hobbes: Jump! Jump! Jump! I win! Calvin: You win? Aaugghh! You won last time! I hate it when you win! Aarrggh! Mff! Gnnk! I hate this game! I hate the whole world! Aghhh! What a stupid game! You must have cheated! You must have used some sneaky, underhanded mindmeld to make me lose! I hate you! I didn't want to play this idiotic game in the first place! I knew you'd cheat! I knew you'd win! Oh! Oh! Aarg! [Calvin runs in circles around Hobbes screaming "Aaaaaaaaaaaa", then falls over.] Hobbes: Look, it's just a game. Calvin: I know! You should see me when I lose in real life!”

KnowsWorldWantShouldFirstsLooksRealPlayWholeRunningLastsUsedHateFallGamesWinningLosesStupidI HateCirclesReal LifeWhole WorldCheatLast TimeHate YouI Hate YouCheatedIdioticHobbesSneaky
Author:Bill Watterson
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“[Calvin and Hobbes are playing Scrabble] Calvin: Ha! I've got a great word and it's on a "Double word score" box! Hobbes: "ZQFMGB" isn't a word! It doesn't even have a vowel! Calvin: It is so a word! It's a worm found in New Guinea! Everyone knows that! Hobbes: I'm looking it up. Calvin: You do, and I'll look up that 12-letter word you played with all the Xs and Js! Hobbes: What's your score for ZQFMGB? Calvin: 957.”

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Author:Bill Watterson
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“Calvin: Look, a dead bird! Hobbes: It must've hit a window. Calvin: Isn't it beautiful? It's so delicate. Sighhh... once it's too late, you appreciate what a miracle life is. You realize that nature is ruthless and our existence is very fragile, temporary, and precious. But to go on with your daily affairs, you can't really think about that... which is probably why everyone takes the world for granted and why we act so thoughtlessly. It's very confusing. I suppose it will all make sense when we grow up. Hobbes: No doubt.”

ThinkingWorldLooksBeautifulLife IsGrowsRealizingExistenceGrowing UpDoubtGoes OnLateBirdAppreciateWindowMiracleAffairGrantedMake SenseNo DoubtToo LateTemporaryFragileDelicateConfusingRuthlessHobbesDelicate Life
Author:Bill Watterson
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“Calvin: Isn't it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humor? When you think about it, it's weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it's funny. Don't you think it's odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us? Hobbes: I suppose if we couldn't laugh at things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life.”

IfsThinkingWayGivingDoeLaughingStrangeEvolutionBenefitsAppreciateResponseMake SenseOddNonsenseSense Of HumorAbsurdityPhysiologicalHobbesComic Strips
Author:Bill Watterson
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“CALVIN: This whole Santa Claus thing just doesn't make sense. Why all the secrecy? Why all the mystery? If the guy exists why doesn't he ever show himself and prove it? And if he doesn't exist what's the meaning of all this? HOBBES: I dunno. Isn't this a religious holiday? CALVIN: Yeah, but actually, I've got the same questions about God.”

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Author:Bill Watterson
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“Wow, it really snowed last night! Isn't it wonderful? Everything familiar has disappeared! The world looks brand new! A new year ... a fresh, clean start! It's like having a big white sheet of paper to draw on! A day full of possibilities! It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy ... let's go exploring!”

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Author:Bill Watterson
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