Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) quotes

• A man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force, to take away his life.
• A man's conscience and his judgement is the same thing; and as the judgement, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.
• Curiosity is the lust of the mind.
• 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.
• Fear of things invisible in the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.
• Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
• He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy.
• In the state of nature profit is the measure of right.
• It is not wisdom but authority that makes a law.
• 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.
• No man's error becomes his own law; nor obliges him to persist in it.
• Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation.
• 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.
• The condition of man.. is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.
• 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.
• There is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.
• They that approve a private opinion, call it an opinion; but they that mislike it, heresy: and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.
• Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools.