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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.

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
Laws
Ignorance
Subjects
Law
Bound
Take
Notice
Every
Bounds
Good
Excuse
Men
Subject

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He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome for he is still an enemy.
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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.
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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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It is many times with a fraudulent Design that men stick their corrupt Doctrine with the Cloves of other mens Wit.
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Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases rashness, with mischance injustice with violence of enemies pride, with ruin cowardice, with oppression and rebellion, with slaughter.
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Nature itself cannot err
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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.
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No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute Knowledge of Fact.
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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.
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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.
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It is not easy to fall into any absurdity, unless it be by the length of an account wherein he may perhaps forget what went before. For all men by nature reason alike, and well, when they have good principles.
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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 obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.
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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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Every man may think his own cause just till it be heard and judged.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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