Top 200 Thomas Hobbes Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

— Thomas Hobbes

2. “Curiosity is the lust of the mind.”

— Thomas Hobbes

3. “Hell is Truth Seen Too Late.”

— Thomas Hobbes

4. “The law is the public conscience.”

— Thomas Hobbes

5. “Reason is the Soul of the Law.”

— Thomas Hobbes

6. “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.”

— Thomas Hobbes

7. “Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy.”

— Thomas Hobbes

8. “Covenants without swords are but words.”

— Thomas Hobbes

9. “The first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it.”

— Thomas Hobbes

10. “When a man tells me God hath spoken in a dream, I know he dreamt that God spoke to him.”

— Thomas Hobbes

11. “I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.”

— Thomas Hobbes

12. “Prudence is a presumption of the future, contracted from the experience of time past.”

— Thomas Hobbes

13. “It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.”

— Thomas Hobbes

14. “A democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orators. The people are so readily moved by demagogues that control must be exercised by the government over speech and press.”

— Thomas Hobbes

15. “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

16. “When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death.”

— Thomas Hobbes

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17. “Humans are driven by a perpetual and restless desire of power.”

— Thomas Hobbes

18. “Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money.”

— Thomas Hobbes

19. “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?”

— Thomas Hobbes

20. “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.”

— Thomas Hobbes

21. “El hombre es un lobo para el hombre.”

— Thomas Hobbes

22. “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.”

— Thomas Hobbes

23. “The object of man’s desire is not to enjoy once only, and for one instant of time; but to assure for ever, the way of his future desires.”

— Thomas Hobbes

24. “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

25. “If I read as many books as most men do, I would be as dull-witted as they are.”

— Thomas Hobbes

26. “The passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason.”

— Thomas Hobbes

27. “Primum vivere deinde philosophari – First one must live, then one may philosophize.”

— Thomas Hobbes

28. “The world is governed by opinion.”

— Thomas Hobbes

29. “Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.”

— Thomas Hobbes

30. “Ambition, and Covetousnesse are Passions that are perpetually incumbent, and pressing.”

— Thomas Hobbes

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

— Thomas Hobbes

32. “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.”

— Thomas Hobbes

33. “Man is distinguished not only by his reason, but also by this singular passion, from all other animals.”

— Thomas Hobbes

34. “Geometry is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind.”

— Thomas Hobbes

35. “All men, among themselves, are by nature equal. The inequality we now discern hath its spring from the civil law.”

— Thomas Hobbes

36. “The “value” or “worth” of a man is, as of all other things, his price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power.”

— Thomas Hobbes

37. “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.”

— Thomas Hobbes

38. “It’s my turn, to take a leap into the darkness!”

— Thomas Hobbes

39. “Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools.”

— Thomas Hobbes

40. “For it is not the shape, but their use, that makes them angels.”

— Thomas Hobbes

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

— Thomas Hobbes

42. “The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.”

— Thomas Hobbes

43. “Where there is no common power, there is no law.”

— Thomas Hobbes

44. “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

45. “Curiosity draws a man from consideration of the effect, to seek the cause.”

— Thomas Hobbes

46. “The first cause of Absurd conclusions I ascribe to the want of Method.”

— Thomas Hobbes

47. “It’s not the pace of life I mind. It’s the sudden stop at the end.”

— Thomas Hobbes

48. “Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.”

— Thomas Hobbes

49. “The Present only has a being in Nature; things Past have a being in the Memory only, but things to come have no being at all; the Future but a fiction of the mind.”

— Thomas Hobbes

50. “To speak impartially, both sayings are very true: that man to man is a kind of God; and that man to man is an arrant wolf. The first is true, if we compare citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we compare cities.”

— Thomas Hobbes