Thomas Hobbes Quotes

And Beasts that have Deliberation , must necessarily also have Will .

Corporations are may lesser commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man.

Understanding is by the flame of the passions never enlightened, but dazzled.

When two, or more men, know of one and the same fact, they are said to be CONSCIOUS of it one to another; which is as much as to know it together.

For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs... why may we not say, that all Automata (Engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life?

A Covenant not to defend my selfe from force, by force, is always voyd.

Christian Kings may erre in deducing a Consequence, but who shall Judge?

To be seduced by Orators, as a Monarch by Flatterers.

Competition of praise inclineth to a reverence of antiquity. For men contend with the living, not with the dead.

That wee have of Geometry, which is the mother of all Naturall Science, wee are not indebted for it to the Schools.

The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.

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.

Corporations are "worms in the body politic"

He that has most experience [is] so much more prudent than he that is new, as not to be equalled by any advantage of natural and extemporary wit- though many young men think the contrary.

A Covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void. For... no man can transfer or lay down his Right to save himself from Death.

The first author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as He presented to his sight.

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.

Now I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark

Silence is sometimes an argument of Consent

I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdity of my waking thoughts.

Fact be virtuous, or vicious, as Fortune pleaseth

Now I am about to take my last voyage a great leap in the dark.

Faith is a gift of God which man can neither give nor take away by promise of rewards or menaces of torture.

Give an inch he'll take an ell.

Appetite with an opinion of attaining is called hope the same without such opinion despair.

If I had read as much as other men I should have known no more than they.

Curiosity is a lust of the mind.

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

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.

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

Prudence is but experience, which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.

Words are the money of fools.

It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.