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Hobbes Quotes

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Hobbes Quotes

“Mom’s not feeling well. So I’m making her a get well card.” “That’s thoughtful of you.” "See, on the front it says, ‘Get Well Soon’ … and on the inside it says,’Because my bed isn’t made, my clothes need to be put away and I’m hungry. Love Calvin.’ Want to sign it?” “Sure, I’m hungry too”

WantNeedsWellsMadeFeelingsFrontsMomBedClothesHungryCardsThoughtfulGet WellHobbesGet Well SoonWell SoonNot Feeling Well
Author:Bill Watterson
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“Calvin: The more you know, the harder it is to take decisive action. Once you are informed, you start seeing complexities and shades of gray. You realize nothing is as clear as it first appears. Ultimately, knowledge is paralyzing. Being a man of action, I cannot afford to take that risk. Hobbes: You're ignorant, but at least you act on it.”

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Author:Bill Watterson
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“Moreover, it is difficult to reconcile Hobbes’s distrust for the individual with his confidence in the altruistic nature of the individual or individuals who will oversee and control the Leviathan. Are not the latter also of flesh and blood? Hobbes seems to be saying that man’s nature cannot be trusted but the nature of a ruler or a ruling assembly of men can be trusted. How so?”

MenSeemsIndividualDifficultBloodFleshLatterRulersTrustedDistrustRulingAssemblyReconcileFlesh And BloodHobbesLeviathan
Book:Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America
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“Hobbes: What are you doing? Calvin: Being "cool." Hobbes: You look more like you're being bored. Calvin: The world bores you when you're cool. Hobbes: Look, I brought a sombrero! Now we can both be "cool." Calvin: A sombrero?! Are you crazy?! Cool people don't wear sombreros! Hobbes: What fun is it being cool if you can't wear a sombrero?”

PeopleIfsWorldLooksFunCrazyLike YouBoredBoresBeing CoolHobbesBores YouGenuinenessBeing BoredCool PeopleSombreros
Author:Bill Watterson
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“As with Hobbes, we see again, the power of fiction. Rousseau's acount of natural man was no more real than Hobbes's, but following the same pattern, once it became the accepted story of human origins, it thereby exercised the power of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In imagining Rousseau to be right, we have become what Rousseau imagined.”

MenHumansRealSelfStoriesNaturalFictionPatternsFollowingAcceptedFulfillingProphecyHobbesSelf Fulfilling Prophecy
Author:Benjamin Wiker
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“"War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.”

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Author:Edmund Burke
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“About Thomas Hobbes: He was 40 years old before he looked on geometry; which happened accidentally. Being in a gentleman's library, Euclid's Elements lay open, and "twas the 47 El. libri I" [Pythagoras' Theorem]. He read the proposition "By God", sayd he, "this is impossible:" So he reads the demonstration of it, which referred him back to such a proposition; which proposition he read. That referred him back to another, which he also read. Et sic deinceps, that at last he was demonstratively convinced of that truth. This made him in love with geometry.”

LoveYearsMadeTruthLastsImpossibleHappenedElementsLaysLibraryConvincedGentlemanPropositionsDemonstrationGeometryTheoremsHobbesEuclidMathematical Proof
Author:John Aubrey
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“The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social contract theory of Hobbes, the "back to nature" optimism of Rousseau, and the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.”

PeopleFeelsPhilosophyFoundSocialSoundMoralStruggleTheoryIntellectualGainsOptimismMethodSatisfactionResistanceRevolutionaryContractsOppressedMillsPeacemakingAhimsaHobbesSocial ContractNonviolent ResistanceUtilitarianismStruggle For Freedom
Book:A Martin Luther King Treasury
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“Anti-Zionists, last of all, exhibit a distaste for certain words. It was Thomas Hobbes who, anticipating semantics, pointed out that words are counters, not coins; that the wise man looks through them to reality. This counsel many anti-Zionists seem to have neglected. They are especially disturbed by the two nouns nationalism and commonwealth, and by the adjective political. And yet these terms on examination are not at all upsetting.”

MenLooksTwoRealitySeemsLastsPoliticalCertainTermWiseIsraelUpsetNationalismCoinsExaminationNeglectedDisturbedExhibitsAdjectivesCommonwealthZionistNounsHobbesDistasteSemantics
Author:Milton Steinberg
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“Long before Einstein told us that matter is energy, Machiavelli and Hobbes and other modern political philosophers defined man as a lump of matter whose most politically relevant attribute is a form of energy called "self-interestedness". This was not a portrait of man "warts and all". It was all wart - except that the dominating attribute was not considered a blemish.”

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Book:Statecraft as Soulcraft
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