Thomas Hobbes Quotes - Page 3

I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.

I think, therefore matter is capable of thinking.

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

A Law of Nature, (Lex Naturalis) is a Precept, or general Rule, found out by Reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit, that, by which he thinketh it may be best preserved.

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

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

The end of knowledge is power ... the scope of all speculation is the performing of some action or thing to be done.

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.

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

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry... no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; 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.

They that are discontented under monarchy, call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy, call it oligarchy: so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy, call it anarchy, which signifies the want of government; and yet I think no man believes, that want of government, is any new kind of government.

Faith is a gift of God, which man can neither give nor take away by promise of rewards or menace of torture.

The Register of Knowledge of Fact is called History .

No arts, no letters - no society.

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.

To be seduced by Orators, as a Monarch by Flatterers.

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

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.

Immortality is a belief grounded upon other men's sayings, that they knew it supernaturally; or that they knew those who knew them that knew others that knew it supernaturally.

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

Desire of praise disposeth to laudable actions.

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.

There is no action of man in this life that is not the beginning of so long a chain of consequences as no human providence is high enough to give a man a prospect in the end. And in this chain, there are linked together both pleasing and unpleasing events in such manner as he that will do anything for his pleasure must engage himself to suffer all the pains annexed to it.

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

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.