Common Quotes by Thomas Hobbes

11 Common quotes by Thomas Hobbes

Hobbes’s pragmatic approach to ordinary affairs appears in these eleven brief statements, providing a quick window into his rationalist outlook.

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Where there is no common power, there is no law

Thomas Hobbes

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During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war;…

Thomas Hobbes

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The Imagination that is raised in man (or any other creature imbued with the faculty of imagining) by words, or other voluntary…

Thomas Hobbes

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To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right…

Thomas Hobbes

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Because silver and gold have their value from the matter itself, they have first this privilege, that the value of them cannot…

Thomas Hobbes

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But if one Subject giveth Counsell to another, to do anything contrary to the Lawes, whether that Counsell proceed from evil intention,…

Thomas Hobbes

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If we could suppose a great multitude of men to consent to the observation of justice, and other laws of Nature, without…

Thomas Hobbes

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The Interpretation of the Laws of Nature in a Common-wealth, dependeth not on the books of Moral Philosophy. The Authority of writers,…

Thomas Hobbes

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The most part of men, though they have the use of reasoning a little way, as in numbering to some degree; yet…

Thomas Hobbes

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Good and Evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions, which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different:…

Thomas Hobbes

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And whereas many men, by accident unevitable, become unable to maintain themselves by their labour; they ought not to be left to…

Thomas Hobbes

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More by Thomas Hobbes

“Give an inch, he'll take an ell.”

Thomas Hobbes

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Do not that to another, which thou wouldst not have done to thyself.

Thomas Hobbes

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For it is with the mysteries of our religion, as with wholesome pills for the sick, which swallowed whole, have the virtue to cure;…

Thomas Hobbes

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Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases; rashness, with mischance; injustice; with violence of enemies; pride, with ruin; cowardice, with oppression; and rebellion, with slaughter.

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

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He that is to govern a whole Nation , must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but Mankind; which though it…

Thomas Hobbes

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If men are naturally in a state of war, why do they always carry arms and why do they have keys to lock their…

Thomas Hobbes

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Let a man (as most men do) rate themselves as the highest Value they can; yet their true Value is no more than it…

Thomas Hobbes

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A free man is he that, in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to…

Thomas Hobbes

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“Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all.”

Thomas Hobbes

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

Thomas Hobbes

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Because silver and gold have their value from the matter itself, they have first this privilege, that the value of them cannot be altered…

Thomas Hobbes

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What reason is there that he which laboreth much, and, sparing the fruits of his labor, consumeth little, should be more charged than he…

Thomas Hobbes

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The cause of Sense, is the External Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense, either immediately, as in theTaste and…

Thomas Hobbes

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The characters of man's heart, blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him that…

Thomas Hobbes

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