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Government is necessary, not because man is naturally bad... but because man is by nature more individualistic than social.

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
Social
Nature
Government
Men
Individualistic
Naturally
Necessary

More quotes by 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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When a man tells me God hath spoken in a dream, I know he dreamt that God spoke to him.
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Immortality is a belief grounded upon other men's sayings, that they knew it supernaturally or that they knew those who knew them that knew others that knew it supernaturally.
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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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The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.
Thomas Hobbes
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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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Such truth, as opposeth no man's profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome.
Thomas Hobbes
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Men measure not only other men, but all other things, by themselves.
Thomas Hobbes
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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.
Thomas Hobbes
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To understand this for sense it is not required that a man should be a geometrician or a logician, but that he should be mad.
Thomas Hobbes
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The end of knowledge is power ... the scope of all speculation is the performing of some action or thing to be done.
Thomas Hobbes
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For all laws are general judgements, or sentences of the legislator as also every particular judgement is a law to him whose case is judged.
Thomas Hobbes
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It's not the pace of life I mind. It's the sudden stop at the end.
Thomas Hobbes
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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.
Thomas Hobbes
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Prudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men in those things they equally apply themselves unto.
Thomas Hobbes
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The power of a man is his present means to obtain some future apparent good.
Thomas Hobbes
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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.
Thomas Hobbes
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Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.
Thomas Hobbes
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The passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason.
Thomas Hobbes
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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.
Thomas Hobbes