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

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
Desire
Death
Power
Leviathan
Inclination
Restless
Perpetual
General
Mankind

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Nature itself cannot err
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The Register of Knowledge of Fact is called History .
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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.
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I think, therefore matter is capable of thinking.
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Let a man (as most men do) rate themselves as the highest Value they can yet their true Value is no more than it is esteemed by others.
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For there are very few so foolish who would not rather govern themselves than be governed by others.
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True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood.
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Curiosity is the lust of the mind.
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Seeing then that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth, had need to remember what every name he uses stands for and to place it accordingly or else he will find himself entangled in words, as a bird in lime-twigs the more he struggles, the more belimed.
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The first cause of Absurd conclusions I ascribe to the want of Method.
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And if a man consider the original of this great Ecclesiastical Dominion, he will easily perceive, that the Papacy , is no other than the Ghost of the deceased Romane Empire , sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: For so did the Papacy start up on a Sudden out of the Ruines of that Heathen Power.
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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.
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Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.
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Wisdom, properly so called, is nothing else but this: the perfect knowledge of the truth in all matters whatsoever.
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True and false are attributes of speech not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood. Error theremay be, as when we expect that which shall not be or suspect what has not been: but in neither case can a man be charged with untruth.
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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.
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The first author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as He presented to his sight.
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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.
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The passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason.
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