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Men measure not only other men, but all other things, by themselves.

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
Measure
Things
Men

More quotes by Thomas Hobbes

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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.
Thomas Hobbes
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Understanding is by the flame of the passions never enlightened, but dazzled.
Thomas Hobbes
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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
Thomas Hobbes
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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.
Thomas Hobbes
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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.
Thomas Hobbes
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Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.
Thomas Hobbes
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Wisdom, properly so called, is nothing else but this: the perfect knowledge of the truth in all matters whatsoever.
Thomas Hobbes
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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.
Thomas Hobbes
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In a Democracy, look how many Demagogs that is how many powerful Orators there are with the people.
Thomas Hobbes
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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.
Thomas Hobbes
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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.
Thomas Hobbes
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By how much one man has more experience of things past, than another, by so much also he is more prudent, and his expectations the seldomer fail him.
Thomas Hobbes
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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.
Thomas Hobbes
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Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.
Thomas Hobbes
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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.
Thomas Hobbes
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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.
Thomas Hobbes
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For after the subject is removed or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the things seen, though more obscure than when we see it...Imagination, therefore, is nothing more than decaying sense.
Thomas Hobbes
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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.
Thomas Hobbes
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Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.
Thomas Hobbes
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I mean by the universe, the aggregate of all things that have being in themselves and so do all men else. And because God has a being, it follows that he is either the whole universe, or part of it. Nor does his Lordship go about to disprove it, but only seems to wonder at it.
Thomas Hobbes