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Thomas Hobbes Biography

Thomas Hobbes (/hɒbz/; 5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679), in some older texts Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, was an English philosopher who is considered one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, which established the social contract theory that has served as the foundation for most later Western political philosophy. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes also contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, jurisprudence, geometry, the physics of gases, theology, ethics, and general philosophy.

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Thomas Hobbes Quotes

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

Commonly, Men, Passion, Potent, Reason

Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

Cardinal, Force, Hype, Two, War

Life is nasty, brutish, and short

Brutish, Life, Life Is, Nasty, Short

The Register of Knowledge of Fact is called History.

Fact, Facts, History, Knowledge, Register

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.

Dawn, Embodied, Horizon, Nothing, Spirit

From whence it happens, that they which trust to books, do as they that cast up many little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not; and at last finding the error visible, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to clear themselves; but spend time in fluttering over their books, as birds that entering by the chimney, and finding themselves enclosed in a chamber, flutter at the false light of a glass window, for want of wit to consider which way they came in.

Book, Considering, Entering, Errors, Glasses, Know

He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy.

Chains, Jail, Overcome, Philosophical, Taken, Though

Good and Evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions, which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different: And diverse men differ not only in their judgment, on the senses of what is pleasant and unpleasant to the taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight, but also of what is conformable, or disagreeable to Reason, in the actions of the common life. Nay, the same man, in diverse times, differs from himself, and one time praiseth, that is, calleth Good, what another time he dispraiseth, and calleth Evil.

Common, Differ, Men, Names, Senses, Smell

There is no action of man in this life that is not the beginning of so long a chain of consequences as no human providence is high enough to give a man a prospect in the end. And in this chain, there are linked together both pleasing and unpleasing events in such manner as he that will do anything for his pleasure must engage himself to suffer all the pains annexed to it.

Consequences, Linked, Long, Men, Pain, Pleasing

To conclude, The Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; Reason is the pace; Encrease of Science, the way; and the Benefit of man-kind, the end.

Science, Men, Light, Humane, Definitions

The condition of man. . . is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.

Everyone, Man, Men, Survival, War

Men measure not only other men, but all other things, by themselves.

Measure, Men, Things

The Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.

Empire, Empires, Grave, Leviathan, Roman, Sitting

Competition of praise inclineth to a reverence of antiquity. For men contend with the living, not with the dead.

Antiquity, Competition, Men, Praise, Reverence

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.

Chapter, Knowledge, Propositions, Science, Things, Two

Of all Discourse , governed by desire of Knowledge, there is at last an End , either by attaining, or by giving over.

Desire, Discourse, Giving, Knowledge, Lasts

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.

Bible, God, Incomprehensible, Nature, Scripture, Signification

As a draft-animal is yoked in a wagon, even so the spirit is yoked in this body

Animal, Body, Spirit, Wagon, Wagons, Yoked

To understand this for sense it is not required that a man should be a geometrician or a logician, but that he should be mad.

Mad, Math, Men, Required, Sense, Understand

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

Authority And Power, Desire, Leviathan, Mankind, Restless

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