Wise words from Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes (April 5th, 1588 – December 20th, 1679) was an English philosopher. He is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan about social contract theory. Hobbes also contributed to ethics, history, geometry, and theology. He’s frequently considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy.

Below we list words of wisdom from Thomas Hobbes.

"The world is governed by opinion."

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

"It's not the pace of life I mind. It's the sudden stop at the end."

"Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness."

"For if all things were equally in all men, nothing would be prized."

"Silence is sometimes an argument of Consent."

"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."

"Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy."

"Nature itself cannot err."

"Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

"Hell is Truth Seen Too Late."

"It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law."

"The original of all great and lasting societies consisted not in the mutual good will men had toward each other, but in the mutual fear they had of each other."

"Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money."

"If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun."

"Wisdom, properly so called, is nothing else but this: the perfect knowledge of the truth in all matters whatsoever."

"The passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason."

"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."

"Curiosity is the lust of the mind."

"For there are very few so foolish who would not rather govern themselves than be governed by others."

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

"Curiosity draws a man from consideration of the effect, to seek the cause."

"Do not that to another, which thou wouldst not have done to thyself."

"Words are the counters of wise men, but the money of fools."

"A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous."

"By this we may understand, there be two sorts of knowledge, whereof the one is nothing else but sense, or knowledge original (as I have said at the beginning of the second chapter), and remembrance of the same; the other is called science or knowledge of the truth of propositions, and how things are called, and is derived from understanding."

"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."

"The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only."

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

"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."

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

"As soon as a thought darts, I write it down."

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