Top 200 Thomas Hobbes Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “I mean by the universe, the aggregate of all things that have being in themselves; and so do all men else. And because God has a being, it follows that he is either the whole universe, or part of it. Nor does his Lordship go about to disprove it, but only seems to wonder at it.”

— Thomas Hobbes

152. “There be as many persons of a king, as there be petty constables in his kingdom. And so there are, or else he cannot be obeyed. But I never said that a king, and every one of his persons, are the same substance.”

— Thomas Hobbes

153. “Christian Kings may erre in deducing a Consequence, but who shall Judge?”

— Thomas Hobbes

154. “If this superstitious fear of Spirits were taken away, and with it, Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted then they are for civill Obedience.”

— Thomas Hobbes

155. “Emulation is grief arising from seeing one’s self, exceeded or excelled by his concurrent, together with hope to equal or exceed him in time to come, by his own ability. But envy is the same grief joined with pleasure conceived in the imagination of some ill-fortune that may befall him.”

— Thomas Hobbes

156. “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.”

— Thomas Hobbes

157. “He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himselfe, not this, or that particular man; but Man-kind;.”

— Thomas Hobbes

158. “To conclude, The Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; Reason is the pace; Encrease of Science, the way; and the Benefit of man-kind, the end.”

— Thomas Hobbes

159. “Fact be vertuous, or vicious, as Fortune pleaseth.”

— Thomas Hobbes

160. “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.”

— Thomas Hobbes

161. “So that every Crime is a sinne; but not every sinne a Crime.”

— Thomas Hobbes

162. “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.”

— Thomas Hobbes

163. “And if a man consider the original of this great Ecclesiastical Dominion, he will easily perceive, that the Papacy, is no other than the Ghost of the deceased Romane Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: For so did the Papacy start up on a Sudden out of the Ruines of that Heathen Power.”

— Thomas Hobbes

164. “It is not easy to fall into any absurdity, unless it be by the length of an account; wherein he may perhaps forget what went before. For all men by nature reason alike, and well, when they have good principles.”

— Thomas Hobbes

165. “A naturall foole that could never learn by heart the order of numerall words, as one, two, and three, may observe every stroak of the Clock, and nod to it, or say one, one, one; but can never know what houre it strikes.”

— Thomas Hobbes

166. “Words are wise men’s counters; they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools.”

— Thomas Hobbes

167. “To say God spake or appeared as he is in his own nature, is to deny his Infiniteness, Invisibility, Incomprehensibility.”

— Thomas Hobbes

168. “It is in the laws of a commonwealth, as in the laws of gaming: Whatsoever the gamesters all agree on, is injustice to none of them.”

— Thomas Hobbes

169. “The Enemy has been here in the night of our natural ignorance, and sown the tares of spiritual errors.”

— Thomas Hobbes

170. “For naturall Bloud is in like manner made of the fruits of the Earth; and circulating, nourisheth by the way, every Member of the Body of Man.”

— Thomas Hobbes

171. “And as in other things, so in men, not the seller, but the buyer determines the Price.”

— Thomas Hobbes

172. “I know not how the world will receive it, nor how it may reflect on those that shall seem to favor it. For in a way beset with those that contend, on one side for too great Liberty, and on the other side for too much Authority, ’tis hard to passe between the points of both unwounded.”

— Thomas Hobbes

173. “But yet they that have no Science, are in better, and nobler condition with their naturall Prudence; than men, that by their mis-reasoning, or by trusting them that reason wrong, fall upon false and absurd generall rules.”

— Thomas Hobbes

174. “Men measure not only other men, but all other things, by themselves.”

— Thomas Hobbes

175. “There is more in Mersenne than in all the universities together.”

— Thomas Hobbes

176. “But all this language gotten, and augmented by Adam and his posterity, was again lost at the tower of Babel, when by the hand of God, every man was stricken for his rebellion, with an oblivion of his former language.”

— Thomas Hobbes

177. “No man is bound by the words themselves, either to kill himselfe, or any other man.”

— Thomas Hobbes

178. “To understand this for sense it is not required that a man should be a geometrician or a logician, but that he should be mad.”

— Thomas Hobbes

179. “Every man may think his own cause just till it be heard and judged.”

— Thomas Hobbes

180. “No arts, no letters – no society.”

— Thomas Hobbes

181. “Desire, to know why, and how, curiosity; such as is in no living creature but man: so that man is distinguished, not only by his reason; but also by this singular passion from other animals; in whom the appetite of food, and other pleasures of sense, by predominance, take away the care of knowing causes; which is a lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of knowledge, exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal pleasure.”

— Thomas Hobbes

182. “Ignorance of naturall causes disposeth a man to Credulity, so as to believe many times impossibilities: for such know nothing to the contrary, but that they may be true; being unable to detect the Impossibility. And Credulity, because men love to be hearkened unto in company, disposeth them to lying: so that Ignorance it selfe without Malice, is able to make a man bothe to believe lyes, and tell them; and sometimes also to invent them.”

— Thomas Hobbes

183. “Setting themselves against reason, as often as reason is against them.”

— Thomas Hobbes

184. “Of all Discourse, governed by desire of Knowledge, there is at last an End, either by attaining, or by giving over.”

— Thomas Hobbes

185. “Concerning the first, there is a saying much usurped of late, That Wisedome is acquired, not by reading of Books, but of Men.”

— Thomas Hobbes

186. “The value of all things contracted for, is measured by the appetite of the contractors, and therefore the just value is that which they be contented to give.”

— Thomas Hobbes

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

— Thomas Hobbes

188. “For all laws are general judgements, or sentences of the legislator; as also every particular judgement is a law to him whose case is judged.”

— Thomas Hobbes

189. “I put for a generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death. And the cause of this, is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight, than he has already attained to; or that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more.”

— Thomas Hobbes

190. “And therefore this is another error of Aristotle’s politics, that in a well-ordered commonwealth, not men should govern, but the laws. What man, that has his natural senses, though he can neither write nor read, does not find himself governed by them he fears, and believes can kill or hurt him when he obeyeth not? Or that believes the law can hurt him; that is, words and paper, without the hands and swords of men?”

— Thomas Hobbes

191. “The Conscience is a thousand witnesses.”

— Thomas Hobbes

192. “It is a weak sovereign that has weak subjects; and a weak people whose sovereign wanteth power to rule them at his will.”

— Thomas Hobbes

193. “The Value, or worth of a man, is as of all otther thinks his Price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his Power: and therefore is not absolute; but a thing dependent on the need and judgement of another. An able conductor of Souldiers, is of great Price in time of War present, or imminent; but in Peace not so.”

— Thomas Hobbes

194. “To speak to another with consideration, to appear before him with decency, and humility, is to Honour him; as signes of fear to offend. To speak to him rashly, to do any thing before him obscenely, slovenly, impudently, is to Dishonour.”

— Thomas Hobbes

195. “But when I think of how many there are to whose designs it will be advantageous that these principles should be false, when I see that those who maintain contrary doctrines are not corrected, even though they have been punished by a civil war, when I see that the best minds are nourished by the seditious doctrines of the ancient Greeks and Romans, I fear that this writing of mine will be numbered with Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, Bacon’s New Atlantis, and similar amusements of the mind.”

— Thomas Hobbes

196. “He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but Man-kind: which though it be hard to do, harder than to learn any Language, or Science; yet, when I shall have set down my own reading orderly, and perspicuously, the pains left another, will be onely to consider, if he also find not the same in himself. For this kind of Doctrine, admitteth no other Demonstration.”

— Thomas Hobbes

197. “Lastly, hee bringeth for argument, the testimony of two Popes, Innocent, and Leo; and I doubt not but hee might have alledged, with as good reason, the testimonies of all the Popes almost since S. Peter: For considering the love of Power naturally implanted in mankind, whosoever were made Pope, he would be tempted to uphold the same opinion. Neverthelesse, they should therein but doe, as Innocent, and Leo did, bear witnesse of themselves, and therefore their witness should not be good.”

— Thomas Hobbes

198. “Eloquence, with flattery, disposeth men to confide in them that have it; because the former is seeming wisdom, the latter seeming kindness. Add to them military reputation and it disposeth men to adhere and subject themselves to those men that have them. The two former, having given them caution against danger from him, the latter gives them caution against danger from others.”

— Thomas Hobbes

199. “The greatest objection is, that of the Practise; when men ask, where, and when, such Power has by Subjects been acknowledged. But one may ask them again, when, or where has there been a Kingdome long free from Sedition and Civill Warre. In those Nations, whose Commonwealths have been long-lived, and not been destroyed, but by forraign warre, the Subjects never did dispute of the Soveraign Power.”

— Thomas Hobbes

200. “Leisure is the mother of philosophy; and commonwealth, the mother of peace and leisure.”

— Thomas Hobbes