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Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

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
Force
Leviathan
War
Cardinal
Two
Cardinals
Hype
Antiwar
Fraud
Virtues
Virtue

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A man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force, to take away his life.
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Emulation is grief arising from seeing one's self, exceeded or excelled by his concurrent, together with hope to equal or exceed him in time to come, by his own ability. But envy is the same grief joined with pleasure conceived in the imagination of some ill-fortune that may befall him.
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The power of a man is his present means to obtain some future apparent good.
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And this Feare of things invisible, is the naturall Seed of that, which every one in himself calleth Religion and in them that worship, or feare that Power otherwise than they do, Superstition.
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And therefore in geometry (which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind), men begin at settling the significations of their words which settling of significations, they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning.
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The law is more easily understood by few than many words. For all words are subject to ambiguity, and therefore multiplication of words in the body of the law is multiplication of ambiguity. Besides, it seems to imply (by too much diligence) that whosoever can evade the words is without the compass of the law.
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Government is necessary, not because man is naturally bad... but because man is by nature more individualistic than social.
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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.
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During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.
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Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.
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The law is the public conscience.
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Those men that are so remissly governed that they dare take up arms to defend or introduce an opinion, are still in war, and their condition not peace, but only a cessation of arms for fear of one another, and they live as it were in the precincts of battle continually.
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The oath adds nothing to the obligation. For a covenant, if lawful, binds in the sight of God, without the oath, as much as with it if unlawful, bindeth not at all, though it be confirmed with an oath.
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Such truth, as opposeth no man's profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome.
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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.
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The value of all things contracted for, is measured by the appetite of the contractors, and therefore the just value is that which they be contented to give.
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So easy are men to be drawn to believe any thing, from such men as have gotten credit with them and can with gentleness and dexterity take hold of their fear and ignorance.
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Understanding is by the flame of the passions never enlightened, but dazzled.
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All men, among themselves, are by nature equal. The inequality we now discern hath its spring from the civil law.
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What reason is there that he which laboreth much, and, sparing the fruits of his labor, consumeth little, should be more charged than he that, living idly, getteth little and spendeth all he gets, seeing the one hath no more protection from the commonwealth than the other?
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