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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.

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
Individual
Foreign
States
According
Every
Relation
Private
Remained
Opinion
Governed
Law
Obey
State
Protected
Free
Relations

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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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Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
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Setting themselves against reason, as often as reason is against them.
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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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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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Ignorance of the law is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the laws to which he is subject.
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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.
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Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.
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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?
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The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding or some error in reasoning or some sudden force of the passions. Defect in the understanding is ignorance in reasoning, erroneous opinion.
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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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Scientia potentia est, sed parva quia scientia egregia rara est, nec proinde apparens nisi paucissimis, et in paucis rebus. Scientiae enim ea natura est, ut esse intelligi non possit, nisi ab illis qui sunt scientia praediti.
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To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.
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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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A Law of Nature, (Lex Naturalis) is a Precept, or general Rule, found out by Reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same and to omit, that, by which he thinketh it may be best preserved.
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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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The passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason.
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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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Because silver and gold have their value from the matter itself, they have first this privilege, that the value of them cannot be altered by the power of one, nor of a few commonwealths, as being a common measure of the commodities of all places. But base money may easily be enhanced or abased.
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The object of man's desire is not to enjoy once only, and for one instant of time but to assure for ever, the way of his future desires.
Thomas Hobbes