Thomas Hobbes: Quotes about men

Thomas Hobbes was English philosopher, born 1588. Explore interesting quotes on men.
Thomas Hobbes: 194   quotes 18   likes

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry… no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Thomas Hobbes
Life , Death , Men , War

“and where men build on false grounds, the more they build, the greater is the ruine:”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The Second Part, Chapter 26, p. 140
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Falseness

“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 book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 5, p. 21 (See also: John Rawls).
Leviathan (1651)
Context: 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. For who is so stupid as both to mistake in geometry, and also to persist in it, when another detects his error to him?
By this it appears that reason is not, as sense and memory, born with us; nor gotten by experience only, as prudence is; but attained by industry: first in apt imposing of names; and secondly by getting a good and orderly method in proceeding from the elements, which are names, to assertions made by connexion of one of them to another; and so to syllogisms, which are the connexions of one assertion to another, till we come to a knowledge of all the consequences of names appertaining to the subject in hand; and that is it, men call science. And whereas sense and memory are but knowledge of fact, which is a thing past and irrevocable, science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another; by which, out of that we can presently do, we know how to do something else when we will, or the like, another time: because when we see how anything comes about, upon what causes, and by what manner; when the like causes come into our power, we see how to make it produce the like effects.
Children therefore are not endued with reason at all, till they have attained the use of speech, but are called reasonable creatures for the possibility apparent of having the use of reason in time to come.

Men , Nature , Forgetting

“And in these foure things, Opinion of Ghosts, Ignorance of second causes, Devotion towards what men fear, and Taking of things Casuall for Prognostics, consisteth the Natural seed of Religion; which by reason of the different Fancies, Judgements, and Passions of severall men, hath grown up into ceremonies so different, that those which are used by one man, are for the most part ridiculous to another.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 12, p. 54
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Fear , Religion , Nature

“And as in other things, so in men, not the seller, but the buyer determines the Price.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 10, p. 42
Leviathan (1651)

Men

“That a man be willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 14, p. 64-65
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Peace , Thinking

“For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other men's at a distance.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 13, p. 61
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Nature , Learning

“For all uniting of strength by private men, is, if for evil intent, unjust; if for intent unknown, dangerous to the Publique, and unjustly concealed.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The Second Part, Chapter 22, p. 122 (See also: Secret society)
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Evil

“The doctrine of Right and Wrong, is perpetually disputed, both by Pen and the Sword: Whereas the doctrine of Lines, and Figures, is not so; because men care not, in that subject what be truth, as a thing that crosses no mans ambition, profit, or lust. For I doubt not, but if it had been a thing contrary to any mans right of dominion, or to the interest of men that have dominion, That the three Angles of a Triangle, should be equall to two Angles of a Square; that doctrine should have been, if not disputed, yet by the burning of all books of Geometry, suppressed, as far as he whom it concerned was able.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 11, p. 80-81
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Truth , Books

“For such Truth as opposeth no man's profit nor pleasure is to all men welcome.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

Review and Conclusion, p. 396, (Last text line)
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Pleasure , Truth

“And whereas many men, by accident unevitable, become unable to maintain themselves by their labour; they ought not to be left to the Charity of private persons; but to be provided for, (as far-forth as the necessities of Nature require,) by the Lawes of the Common-wealth. For as it is Unchariablenesse in any man, to neglect the impotent; so it is in the Soveraign of a Common-wealth, to expose them to the hazard of such uncertain Charity.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The Second Part, Chapter 30, p. 181
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Law , Nature , Personality

“Men looke not at the greatnesse of the evill past, but the greatnesse of the good to follow.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 15, p. 76 (Italics as per text)
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Evil , Past

“But yet they that have no Science, are in better, and nobler condition with their naturall Prudence; than men, that by their mis-reasoning, or by trusting them that reason wrong, fall upon false and absurd generall rules.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 5, p. 21
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Science , Falseness

“Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 13, p. 62
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Time

“And for Incoherent Speech, it was amongst the Gentiles taken for one sort of Prophecy, because the Prophets of their Oracles, intoxicated with a spirit, or vapor from the cave of the Pythian Oracle at Delphi, were for a time really mad, and spake like mad-men; of whoose loose words a sense might be made to fit any event, in such sort, as all bodies are said to be made of Materia prima.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The Third Part, Chapter 36, p. 226 (See also: Glossolalia)
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Sense , Time , Madness

“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 book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 2, p. 8
Leviathan (1651)

Men , People , Fear , Dreams

“For Prudence, is but Experience; which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 13, p. 60
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Time

“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 book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 11, p. 50
Leviathan (1651)

Men , Passion

“When two, or more men, know of one and the same fact, they are said to be CONSCIOUS of it one to another; which is as much as to know it together.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 7, p. 31
Leviathan (1651)

Men