A man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force, to take away his life.
– Thomas Hobbes
A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.
– Thomas Hobbes
All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called Facts. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.
– Thomas Hobbes
As a draft-animal is yoked in a wagon, even so the spirit is yoked in this body.
– Thomas Hobbes
Desire to know why, and how - curiosity, which is a lust of the mind, that a perseverance of delight in the continued and indefatigable generation of knowledge - exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal pleasure.
– Thomas Hobbes
Fear of things invisible in the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.
– Thomas Hobbes
Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
– Thomas Hobbes
I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.
– Thomas Hobbes
In the state of nature profit is the measure of right.
– Thomas Hobbes
No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
– Thomas Hobbes
No man's error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.
– Thomas Hobbes
Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation.
– Thomas Hobbes
Prudence is but experience, which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.
– Thomas Hobbes
Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.
– Thomas Hobbes
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.
– Thomas Hobbes
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.
– Thomas Hobbes
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.
– Thomas Hobbes
The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is a lust of the mind.
– Thomas Hobbes
The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.
– Thomas Hobbes
The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only.
– Thomas Hobbes
The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life.
– Thomas Hobbes
The science which teacheth arts and handicrafts is merely science for the gaining of a living; but the science which teacheth deliverance from worldly existence, is not that the true science?
– Thomas Hobbes
Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.
– Thomas Hobbes
War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known.
– Thomas Hobbes
Words are the money of fools.
– Thomas Hobbes
Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon with them, but they are the money of fools.
– Thomas Hobbes
Appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair.
– Thomas Hobbes
Leisure is the mother of philosophy.
– Thomas Hobbes
There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.
– Thomas Hobbes
The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.
– Thomas Hobbes
The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.
– Thomas Hobbes
It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.
– Thomas Hobbes
I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.
– Thomas Hobbes
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.