Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, in which he expounds on an influential formulation of social contract theory. These Thomas Hobbes quotes will inspire you.
Best Thomas Hobbes Quotes
- “Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Government is necessary, not because man is naturally bad… but because man is by nature more individualistic than social.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Humans are driven by a perpetual and restless desire of power.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “A democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orators. The people are so readily moved by demagogues that control must be exercised by the government over speech and press.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “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
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“The condition of man… is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Hell is Truth Seen Too Late.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “The original of all great and lasting societies consisted not in the mutual goodwill men had toward each other, but in the mutual fear they had of each other.” ~ 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
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“If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Religions are like pills, which must be swallowed whole without chewing.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Curiosity is the lust of the mind.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money.” ~ 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
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“The passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Where there is no common power, there is no law” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “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.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “It’s not the pace of life I mind. It’s the sudden stop at the end.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
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“The world is governed by opinion.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “All men, among themselves, are by nature equal. The inequality we now discern hath its spring from the civil law.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “The first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “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.” ~ Thomas Hobbes , Thomas Hobbes quotes on government
- “So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory. The first maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, for reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters of other men’s persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their persons or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation, their profession, or their name.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
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“Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy.” ~ 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
- “For if all things were equally in all men, nothing would be prized.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Prudence is a presumption of the future, contracted from the experience of time past.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “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
- “and where men build on false grounds, the more they build, the greater is the ruine” ~ Thomas Hobbes
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“Life is nasty, brutish, and short” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Silence is sometimes an argument of Consent.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “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.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “If I read as many books as most men do, I would be as dull-witted as they are.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
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“Do not that to another, which thou wouldst not have done to thyself.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Scientia potentia est, sed parva; quia scientia egregia rara est, nec proinde apparens nisi paucissimis, et in paucis rebus. Scientiae enim ea natura est, ut esse intelligi non possit, nisi ab illis qui sunt scientia praediti.” ~ 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
- “If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Curiosity draws a man from consideration of the effect, to seek the cause.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
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“As soon as a thought darts, I write it down.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “And seeing every man is presumed to do all things in order to his own benefit, no man is a fit Arbitrator in his own cause” ~ 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
- “Ignorance of the law is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the laws to which he is subject.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “The Register of Knowledge of Fact is called History .” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “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.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
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“Words are the counters of wise men, but the money of fools.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “If men are naturally in a state of war, why do they always carry arms and why do they have keys to lock their doors?” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “For there are very few so foolish who would not rather govern themselves than be governed by others.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Power as is really divided, and as dangerously to all purposes, by sharing with another an Indirect Power, as a Direct one.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind or imagined from tales publicly allowed, is religion; not allowed, superstition.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “The Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
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“Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “There is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind while we live here.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “For it is not the shape, but their use, that makes them angels.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “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
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“Obligation is thraldom, and thraldom is hateful.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “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.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “The end of knowledge is power … the scope of all speculation is the performing of some action or thing to be done.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “Nature itself cannot err” ~ Thomas Hobbes
- “The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only.” ~ Thomas Hobbes
