Quotes from Thomas Hobbes

What is the heart but a spring, and the nerves but so many strings, and the joints but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body?

The "value" or "worth" of a man is, as of all other things, his price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power.

The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is a lust of the mind.

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.

Silence is sometimes an argument of Consent.

No arts, no letters - no society.

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 Covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void. For... no man can transfer or lay down his Right to save himself from Death.

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

If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.

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.

Desire of praise disposeth to laudable actions.

Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.

He that has most experience [is] so much more prudent than he that is new, as not to be equalled by any advantage of natural and extemporary wit- though many young men think the contrary.

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

Fear of things invisible in the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.

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.

Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.

The science which teacheth arts and handicrafts is merely science for the gaining of a living; but the science which teacheth deliverance from worldly existence, is not that the true science?

Prudence is a presumption of the future, contracted from the experience of time past.