The 70 best famous quotes by Thomas Hobbes

One of the greatest philosophers of liberalism. We review his greatest famous quotes.

Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679) was a leading English philosopher who greatly influenced the political philosophy of the modern era. Author of Leviathan (1651), in his works he explored the ethical standards governing free market societies.

A theorist of liberalism, Hobbes left an extensive legacy in disciplines as disparate as political science, history, ethics, physics and geometry.

Phrases of Thomas Hobbes, the English philosopher.

In his texts he told us about the importance of the liberal state and the limits of representative democracy.

In today's article we will do an exhaustive review with the best phrases of Thomas Hobbesto make his philosophical and political thought more accessible.

1. Desire, accompanied by the idea of satisfaction, is called hope; stripped of this idea, despair.

Reflection on life expectations.

2. Laughter is nothing but the glory born of our superiority.

A small token of moral and intellectual superiority.

3. The first and fundamental law of nature is to seek peace.

Without that harmony there is nothing else that can be built.

4. Eloquence is power, because it has the aspect of prudence.

To speak well means to weigh the tone and the content of what is going to be said.

5. Fear and I were born twins.

With similar characteristics.

6. When men build on false foundations, the more they build, the greater the ruin.

The foundations of great enterprises, the more solid, the better.

7. Man is a wolf to man.

Homo homini lupusperhaps Thomas Hobbes' most famous quote.

8. Life is a perpetual movement that, if it cannot progress in a straight line, it unfolds circularly.

In a continuous dynamic process.

9. This private norm for defining the good is not only a vain doctrine, but is also pernicious for the public State.

An ethical reflection.

10. Idleness is the mother of philosophy.

Once we have nothing to do, we can reflect on everything and nothing.

11. The basis of all great and lasting societies has consisted, not in the mutual will that men had for each other, but in the reciprocal fear.

Respect for authority is, historically, the glue by which societies can subsist.

12. After such a barbarity, what can be said?

An ironic answer to one of his interlocutors.

13. Ideas stimulate the mind.

Creativity is born from there.

14. Favors obligate, and obligation is slavery.

When you receive a favor from someone, be suspicious.

15. When two men desire the same thing that they cannot enjoy together they become enemies.

That is how competition works.

16. The Messiah was both, a lot of sacrificial goat and a lot of escape goat.

About Jesus Christ and his life.

17. War does not consist only in battle but in the will to contend.

What lies behind armed conflicts.

Julius Caesar and other emperors who came after him obtained the same testimony, that is, they were canonized as saints.

From high politics to religious veneration.

19. There are very few who are so foolish as not to prefer to govern themselves rather than be governed by others.

To have one's own judgment is always preferable.

20. The inequality that now exists has been introduced by civil laws.

In the opinion of several phrases of Thomas Hobbes, law is the genesis of inequality.

21. To an egalitarian justice also corresponds an egalitarian application of taxes....

The rich cannot pay less, or the social contract is undermined.

22. We do not seek society out of love for it, but for the honors or benefits it can bring us.

Society helps us to achieve our desires.

23. A democracy is in reality nothing more than an aristocracy of orators, sometimes interrupted by the temporary monarchy of an orator.

The voice of the people is seldom represented.

24. The notions of righteousness and unrighteousness, justice and injustice, have no place in war.

They are ethical variables that do not apply to war conflicts.

25. In the nature of man we find three main causes of quarrel: competition, distrust and glory.

Food for thought.

26. Sometimes a man wishes to know the result of an action, and then he thinks of a similar action and the successive results to which it gave rise, on the supposition that similar actions will be followed by similar results.

One of those sentences of Thomas Hobbes in which he discusses human motivations.

27. A free man is he who, having strength and talent to do a thing, finds no hindrance to his will.

He focuses directly on the goal.

28. The pagans also had their saturnalias, and we have carnivals.

A form of collective redemption.

29. Those who approve of an opinion, call it opinion; but those who disapprove of it, call it heresy.

All depends on the point of view, according to Hobbes.

30. But he to whom, under promise of obedience, life and liberty will then be conquered and become a subject.

For example, with the religious or ideological yoke.

31. The submission of the subjects to their sovereign is understood to last as long and no longer, when the latter has the power to protect them.

A single requirement to be a subject.

32. The impostors do not need much study of natural causes; it is enough for them to make use of the common ignorance, stupidity, and superstition of mankind.

The modus operandi of those who do not go straight.

33. From equality of ability arises equality of hope in the attainment of our ends.

A moral maxim that is the premise of meritocracy.

34. I am about to take my last journey; I am going to take the great leap in the dark.

On death.

35. Christ has left to his ministers of this world, unless they are also endowed with civil authority, no authority to command other men.

Authority is hardly comprehensible.

36. The idles of rest are the fathers of Philosophy.

Another phrase of Hobbes in reference to the importance of leisure in the development of our thinking.

37. The fear of an invisible power, feigned by the mind or imagined from stories that have been accepted by the public, we call religion; if they have not been accepted, superstition.

Pertinent reflection on beliefs.

38. How can a man who has not had a supernatural revelation be sure that the one who declares that law has done so by revelation? And how can he be obliged to obey those laws?

Thoughts about the genesis of laws.

39. When a man, because of his natural asperity, seeks to withhold what, being superfluous to himself, is necessary for others, and, owing to the stubbornness of his passions, cannot be corrected, he is to be expelled from society as a danger to it.

He deserves imprisonment, according to Hobbes.

40. When a man reasons, he does nothing else than to conceive a sum total, by addition of parts, or to conceive a remainder by subtraction.

On our way of thinking.

41. It follows that from absurd and false statements - should they be universal - there can be no understanding, although many think they understand them, when in reality they merely repeat words under their breath or learn them by heart.

A logical reasoning about human understanding.

42. From among the diseases of a State, I shall therefore consider, in the first place, those which arise from an imperfect institution and which resemble the diseases of a natural body proceeding from defective procreation.

Looking for metaphors between the health of a State and physical health.

43. So that a person is the same as an actor, both on the stage and in ordinary conversation.

We all act in the way that suits us best.

44. The fear of invisible things is the natural seed of what everyone calls religion for himself.

A curious conception of religions.

45. The Papacy is but the ghost of the departed Roman Empire.

A negative appraisal of the Vatican.

46. The power of the Pope, even if it were St. Peter, is neither a monarchy, nor is there anything archaic or crass about it, but only didactic.

Another sentence on the influence of the Pope.

47. The present exists only in nature; things past have their being only in memory; but things to come have no existence at all, for the future is nothing but a fiction which the mind fabricates by attributing to present actions the consequences which followed from past actions.

Ontological description.

48. Those men who base their knowledge on the authority of books, and not on their own meditation, are of a lower condition than the simple ignorant.

Knowledge without real experience is of no avail.

49. It is manifest, therefore, that men do not know, but only believe that Scripture is the word of God.

A criticism of religious faith.

50. It is the duty of the sovereign to see that the people are properly instructed; and it is not only his duty, but also his benefit, and the means of securing himself against the danger that may befall his natural person from rebellion.

Education as a fundamental pillar of the reproduction of state structures.

51. The emergence of property is an effect of the institution of the State.

As such, the State has the mission to safeguard this right.

52. Good looks are power, because, being a promise of good, they procure for men the favor of women and strangers.

Reflection on the good image.

53. The canonization of saints is another religion of gentilism.

One of those Christian rituals that are a little bit dandruffy.

54. The darkest part of Satan's kingdom is that which is outside the Churches of God, that is, among those who do not believe in Jesus Christ.

To reflect on faith.

55. The sciences bring with them little power, because they are not very visible and cannot be recognized in any man.

Interesting reflection on the social weight of the sciences.

56. Competition for wealth, honors, command or any other power leads to antagonism, enmity and war. For the way a competitor achieves his desires is by killing, subduing, supplanting or rejecting the one who competes with him.

Liberalism carries with it a series of vices.

57. The truth is that the praise of ancient writers does not come from a respect for the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy that takes place among the living.

It is not possible to congratulate in life, fruit of the absurd competition between writers.

58. What gives to human actions a taste of justice is that nobility or gallantry of mind, which occurs very rarely, that makes a man despise the advantages he might obtain in his life as the result of fraud or the breaking of a promise.

Ethics as the summit of moral cheerfulness.

59. Ecclesiastics prevent young people from making use of their reason.

They do not allow their critical capacity to flow.

60. Christian States punish those who rebel against the Christian religion; and all States punish those who try to establish a religion which is forbidden by them.

On the doctrinal will of all States.

61. The Greeks have only one and the same word, logos, to mean language and reason.

It must be for a reason that they speak with the same voice.

62. Influential individuals always have difficulty in digesting doctrines that establish a power capable of curbing their whims.

They are always ambitious for more and more.

63. Those who are in charge of the government are careful not to approve indirectly what they directly prohibit.

The law is made, the trap is made.

64. Men find no pleasure, but great suffering, in living with others where there is no power capable of frightening them all.

According to Hobbes, man needs clear rules to live in peace.

65. But it is not the author, but the authority of the Church, that makes a book a canonical text.

Authority emanates from power, not from the unique and mystical vision of the author.

66. Show yourself conciliatory with your adversary while you share the road with him, lest he turn you over to the judge, and the judge to the bailiff, and you be put in prison.

This is a great teaching so that we do not get caught in an absurd trap.

67. No man can infallibly know, by natural reason, whether another has had a supernatural revelation of the will of God; he will have only a belief.

Reflection on the mystical life.

68. No injustice can become a standard of judgment by which subsequent judges are guided.

Jurisprudence must be limited to manifestly just cases.

69. No man can have a thought or representation of anything that is not subject to the order of the sensory.

Perception alone gives us instruments for our imagination.

70. Originally, tyrant meant simply monarch.

For some reason the meaning mutated.