Quotes from Thomas Hobbes

Curiosity is the lust of the mind.

Hell is truth seen too late.

Scientia potentia est. Knowledge is power.

For such is the nature of man, 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: For they see their own wit at hand, and other mens at a distance.

Life is nasty, brutish, and short

Leisure is the mother of Philosophy

The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions. Defect in the understanding is ignorance; in reasoning, erroneous opinion.

Homo homini lupus

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.

Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

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

Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools.

The first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it.

For it can never be that war shall preserve life, and peace destroy it.

For to accuse requires less eloquence, such is man's nature, than to excuse; and condemnation, than absolution, more resembles justice.

When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death.

A great leap in the dark

it is one thing to desire, another to be in capacity fit for what we desire.

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?

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

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

He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himselfe, not this, or that particular man; but Man-kind;

The universe, the whole mass of things that are, is corporeal, that is to say, body, and hath the dimensions of magnitude, length, breadth and depth. Every part of the universe is 'body' and that which is not 'body' is no part of the universe, and because the universe is all, that which is no part of it is nothing, and consequently nowhere.

The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions.