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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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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
None
Relinquished
Protect
Transfer
Force
Transfers
Else
Covenant
Nature
Void
Right
Defend
Always
Lays
Men
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Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
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For it is not the shape, but their use, that makes them angels.
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Understanding is by the flame of the passions never enlightened, but dazzled.
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It's not the pace of life I mind. It's the sudden stop at the end.
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The first cause of Absurd conclusions I ascribe to the want of Method.
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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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Government is necessary, not because man is naturally bad... but because man is by nature more individualistic than social.
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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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From the same it proceedeth,that men gives different names, to one and the same thing, from the difference of their own passions: As they that approve a private opinion, call it Opinion but they that mislike it, Haeresie: and yet haeresie signifies no more than private opinion but has only agreater tincture of choler
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In sum, all actions and habits are to be esteemed good or evil by their causes and usefulness in reference to the commonwealth, and not by their mediocrity, nor by their being commended. For several men praise several customs, and, contrarily, what one calls vice, another calls virtue, as their present affections lead them.
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A Covenant not to defend my selfe from force, by force, is always voyd.
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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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Ambition, and Covetousnesse are Passions that are perpetually incumbent, and pressing.
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And Beasts that have Deliberation , must necessarily also have Will .
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If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.
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To be seduced by Orators, as a Monarch by Flatterers.
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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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Life is nasty, brutish, and short
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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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To speak impartially, both sayings are very true: that man to man is a kind of God and that man to man is an arrant wolf. The first is true, if we compare citizens amongst themselves and the second, if we compare cities.
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