Quotes from Thomas Hobbes

When the nature of the thing is incomprehensible, I can acquiesce in the Scripture: but when the signification of words is incomprehensible, I cannot acquiesce in the authority of a Schoolman.

To say God spake or appeared as he is in his own nature, is to deny his Infiniteness, Invisibility, Incomprehensibility.

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

Humans are driven by a perpetual and restless desire of power.

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.

Power as is really divided, and as dangerously to all purposes, by sharing with another an Indirect Power, as a Direct one.

Where there is no common power, there is no law

I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.

Geometry is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind.

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

When a man tells me God hath spoken in a dream, I know he dreamt that God spoke to him.

The first author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as He presented to his sight.

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.

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.

Appetite with an opinion of attaining is called hope the same without such opinion despair.

For after the subject is removed or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the things seen, though more obscure than when we see it...Imagination, therefore, is nothing more than decaying sense.

The reputation of power IS power.

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

Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind or imagined from tales publicly allowed, is religion; not allowed, superstition.

Time, and Industry, produce everyday new knowledge.

No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute Knowledge of Fact.

The Register of Knowledge of Fact is called History .

Curiosity is the lust of the mind.

The end of knowledge is power ... the scope of all speculation is the performing of some action or thing to be done.