Menu

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Thomas Hobbes Quotes

All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called ‘Facts’. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.

– Thomas Hobbes

Prudence is but experience, which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.

– Thomas Hobbes

In the state of nature profit is the measure of right.

– Thomas Hobbes

No man’s error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.

– Thomas Hobbes

The disembodied spirit is immortal; there is nothing of it that can grow old or die. But the embodied spirit sees death on the horizon as soon as its day dawns.

– Thomas Hobbes

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

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

The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.

– Thomas Hobbes

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

– Thomas Hobbes

The condition of man… is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.

– Thomas Hobbes

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

– Thomas Hobbes

That a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defense of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.

– Thomas Hobbes

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

Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy.

– Thomas Hobbes

Words are the money of fools.

– Thomas Hobbes

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

– Thomas Hobbes

Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

– Thomas Hobbes

It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.

– Thomas Hobbes

Such truth, as opposeth no man’s profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome.

– Thomas Hobbes

The right of nature… is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life.

– Thomas Hobbes

Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.

– Thomas Hobbes

A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him.

– Thomas Hobbes

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

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

Curiosity is the lust of the mind.

– Thomas Hobbes

Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation.

– Thomas Hobbes