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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.

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
Men
Second
Cities
Arrant
Speak
Impartially
True
Sayings
Government
Amongst
Firsts
Wolf
First
Compare
Kind
Citizens

More quotes by Thomas Hobbes

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For it is with the mysteries of our religion, as with wholesome pills for the sick, which swallowed whole, have the virtue to cure but chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect.
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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.
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Wisdom, properly so called, is nothing else but this: the perfect knowledge of the truth in all matters whatsoever.
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Man is distinguished not only by his reason, but also by this singular passion, from all other animals.
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Understanding is by the flame of the passions never enlightened, but dazzled.
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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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When a man tells me God hath spoken in a dream, I know he dreamt that God spoke to him.
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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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Leisure is the mother of philosophy and commonwealth, the mother of peace and leisure.
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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.
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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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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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The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.
Thomas Hobbes
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To say that God is an incorporeal substance, is to say in effect there is no God at all. What alleges he against it, but the School-divinity which I have already answered? Scripture he can bring none, because the word incorporeal is not found in Scripture.
Thomas Hobbes
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No man is bound by the words themselves, either to kill himselfe, or any other man.
Thomas Hobbes
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The first cause of Absurd conclusions I ascribe to the want of Method.
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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Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.
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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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By consequence, or train of thoughts, I understand that succession of one thought to another which is called, to distinguish it from discourse in words, mental discourse. When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently.
Thomas Hobbes