Quote

A democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orators. The people are so readily moved by demagogues that control must be exercised by the government over speech and press.

Thomas Hobbes

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Control
Orators
Democracy
Exercised
Government
Aristocracy
Must
Readily
People
Presses
Press
Moved
Speech
Demagogues

More quotes by Thomas Hobbes

Image
Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter.
Thomas Hobbes
Image
All men, among themselves, are by nature equal. The inequality we now discern hath its spring from the civil law.
Thomas Hobbes
Image
It is many times with a fraudulent Design that men stick their corrupt Doctrine with the Cloves of other mens Wit.
Thomas Hobbes
Image
Wisdom, properly so called, is nothing else but this: the perfect knowledge of the truth in all matters whatsoever.
Thomas Hobbes
Image
Corporations are may lesser commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man.
Thomas Hobbes
Image
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
Image
The passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason.
Thomas Hobbes
Image
If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.
Thomas Hobbes
Image
The first cause of Absurd conclusions I ascribe to the want of Method.
Thomas Hobbes
Image
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?
Thomas Hobbes
Image
How could a state be governed, or protected in its foreign relations if every individual remained free to obey or not to obey the law according to his private opinion.
Thomas Hobbes
Image
The first author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as He presented to his sight.
Thomas Hobbes
Image
If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun.
Thomas Hobbes
Image
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
Image
No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute Knowledge of Fact.
Thomas Hobbes
Image
Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the conversation, and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify our appetites, and aversions which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different.
Thomas Hobbes
Image
For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself
Thomas Hobbes
Image
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.
Thomas Hobbes
Image
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
Image
Covenants without swords are but words.
Thomas Hobbes