Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established social contract theory, the foundation of most later Western political philosophy...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth5 April 1588
spring moving watches
For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs... why may we not say, that all Automata (Engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life?
war men battle
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.
men greater
and where men build on false grounds, the more they build, the greater is the ruine
crime
So that every Crime is a sinne; but not every sinne a Crime.
taken men mad
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 .
thinking matter capable
I think, therefore matter is capable of thinking.
purpose indirect direct
Power as is really divided, and as dangerously to all purposes, by sharing with another an Indirect Power, as a Direct one.
philosophy book law
The Interpretation of the Laws of Nature in a Common-wealth, dependeth not on the books of Moral Philosophy. The Authority of writers, without the Authority of the Commonwealth, maketh not their opinions Law, be they never so true.
law should
This is that law of the Gospel; whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them.
propositions
Science [is] knowledge of the truth of Propositions and how things are called.
men order benefits
And seeing every man is presumed to do all things in order to his own benefit, no man is a fit Arbitrator in his own cause
past men
Men looke not at the greatnesse of the evill past, but the greatnesse of the good to follow.
men two together
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.
men judging causes
No man can be judge to his own cause.