Top 200 Thomas Hobbes Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

52. “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

53. “Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter.”

— Thomas Hobbes

54. “Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.”

— Thomas Hobbes

55. “For it can never be that war shall preserve life, and peace destroy it.”

— Thomas Hobbes

56. “Silence is sometimes an argument of Consent.”

— Thomas Hobbes

57. “For to accuse requires less eloquence, such is man’s nature, than to excuse; and condemnation, than absolution, more resembles justice.”

— Thomas Hobbes

58. “The Interpretation of the Laws of Nature in a Common-wealth, dependeth not on the books of Moral Philosophy. The Authority of writers, without the Authority of the Commonwealth, maketh not their opinions Law, be they never so true.”

— Thomas Hobbes

59. “Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.”

— Thomas Hobbes

60. “The Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.”

— Thomas Hobbes

61. “Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter.”

— Thomas Hobbes

62. “The power of a man is his present means to obtain some future apparent good.”

— Thomas Hobbes

63. “Life is nasty, brutish, and short.”

— Thomas Hobbes

64. “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

65. “If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun.”

— Thomas Hobbes

66. “I think, therefore matter is capable of thinking.”

— Thomas Hobbes

67. “Baptism is the sacrament of allegiance of them that are to be received into the Kingdom of God, that is to say, into Eternal life, that is to say, to Remission of Sin. For as Eternal life was lost by the committing, so it is recovered by the remitting of men’s sins.”

— Thomas Hobbes

68. “Wisdom, properly so called, is nothing else but this: the perfect knowledge of the truth in all matters whatsoever.”

— Thomas Hobbes

69. “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

70. “Desire of praise disposeth to laudable actions.”

— Thomas Hobbes

71. “In a Democracy, look how many Demagogs that is how many powerful Orators there are with the people.”

— Thomas Hobbes

72. “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

73. “For if all things were equally in all men, nothing would be prized.”

— Thomas Hobbes

74. “True and false are attributes of speech not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood. Error theremay be, as when we expect that which shall not be; or suspect what has not been: but in neither case can a man be charged with untruth.”

— Thomas Hobbes

75. “Words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.”

— Thomas Hobbes

76. “It is fairer to tax people on what they extract from the economy, as roughly measured by their consumption, than to tax them on what they produce for the economy, as roughly measured by their income.”

— Thomas Hobbes

77. “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

78. “For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself.”

— Thomas Hobbes

79. “Whatsoever is the object of any man’s Appetite or Desire; that is it which he for his part calleth Good: and the object of his Hate and Aversion, evil.”

— Thomas Hobbes

80. “Appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair.”

— Thomas Hobbes

81. “True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood.”

— Thomas Hobbes

82. “The reputation of power IS power.”

— Thomas Hobbes

83. “Atque metum tantum concepit tunc mea mater. Ut pareret geminos, meque metumque simul.”

— Thomas Hobbes

84. “Opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotion to what men fear, and talking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth the natural seeds of religion.”

— Thomas Hobbes

85. “Those men that are so remissly governed that they dare take up arms to defend or introduce an opinion, are still in war, and their condition not peace, but only a cessation of arms for fear of one another, and they live as it were in the precincts of battle continually.”

— Thomas Hobbes

86. “Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.”

— Thomas Hobbes

87. “They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that dislike it, heresy; and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.”

— Thomas Hobbes

88. “This is that law of the Gospel; whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them.”

— Thomas Hobbes

89. “Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind or imagined from tales publicly allowed, is religion; not allowed, superstition.”

— Thomas Hobbes

90. “There are very few so foolish that they had not rather govern themselves than be governed by others.”

— Thomas Hobbes

91. “A man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force, to take away his life.”

— Thomas Hobbes

92. “Science is the knowledge of Consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another: by which, out of that we can presently do, we know how to do something else when we will, or the like, another time.”

— Thomas Hobbes

93. “Corporations are “worms in the body politic””

— Thomas Hobbes

94. “If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.”

— Thomas Hobbes

95. “Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.”

— Thomas Hobbes

96. “How could a state be governed, or protected in its foreign relations if every individual remained free to obey or not to obey the law according to his private opinion.”

— Thomas Hobbes

97. “The Register of Knowledge of Fact is called History .”

— Thomas Hobbes

98. “Nor can a man any more live, whose Desires are at an end, than he, whose Senses and Imaginations are at a stand.”

— Thomas Hobbes

99. “A man’s conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.”

— Thomas Hobbes

100. “He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy.”

— Thomas Hobbes