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Such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves.

Thomas Hobbes

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Thomas Hobbes
Age: 91 †
Born: 1588
Born: April 5
Died: 1679
Died: December 4
Economist
Historian
Mathematician
Philosopher
Political Scientist
Politician
Translator
Westport
Wiltshire
Hobbes
Thomas Hobbsted
Thomas Hobbes of Malflutry
May
Hardly
Many
Acknowledge
Believe
Intelligence
Men
Learned
Wise
Howsoever
Wisdom
Leviathan
Others
Eloquent
Nature
Witty

More quotes by Thomas Hobbes

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Setting themselves against reason, as often as reason is against them.
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Corporations are may lesser commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man.
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In a Democracy, look how many Demagogs that is how many powerful Orators there are with the people.
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Ignorance of the law is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the laws to which he is subject.
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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.
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Words are the counters of wise men, but the money of fools.
Thomas Hobbes
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The Enemy has been here in the night of our natural ignorance, and sown the tares of spiritual errors.
Thomas Hobbes
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As a draft-animal is yoked in a wagon, even so the spirit is yoked in this body
Thomas Hobbes
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Because silver and gold have their value from the matter itself, they have first this privilege, that the value of them cannot be altered by the power of one, nor of a few commonwealths, as being a common measure of the commodities of all places. But base money may easily be enhanced or abased.
Thomas Hobbes
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But yet they that have no Science , are in better, and nobler condition with their naturall Prudence than men, that by their mis-reasoning, or by trusting them that reason wrong, fall upon false and absurd generall rules.
Thomas Hobbes
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The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.
Thomas Hobbes
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If this superstitious fear of Spirits were taken away, and with it, Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted then they are for civill Obedience.
Thomas Hobbes
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Every man may think his own cause just till it be heard and judged.
Thomas Hobbes
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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.
Thomas Hobbes
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Scientia potentia est, sed parva quia scientia egregia rara est, nec proinde apparens nisi paucissimis, et in paucis rebus. Scientiae enim ea natura est, ut esse intelligi non possit, nisi ab illis qui sunt scientia praediti.
Thomas Hobbes
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For it is with the mysteries of our religion, as with wholesome pills for the sick, which swallowed whole, have the virtue to cure but chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect.
Thomas Hobbes
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As, in Sense, that which is really within us, is (as I have said before) only Motion, caused by the action of external objects, but in appearance to the Sight, Light and Color to the Ear, Sound to the Nostril, Odor, &c.
Thomas Hobbes
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When a man tells me God hath spoken in a dream, I know he dreamt that God spoke to him.
Thomas Hobbes
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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. For the right men have by Nature to protect themselves, when none else can protect them, can by no Covenant be relinquished. ... [The right] to defend ourselves [is the] summe of the Right of Nature.
Thomas Hobbes
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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.
Thomas Hobbes