Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was an English philosopher and political theorist. One of the seminal figures of British empiricism, his major works, Leviathan (1651) and De Homine (1658,) expressed his principle of materialism and his concept of a social contract forming the basis of society.
Born in Westport, Wiltshire, Hobbes argued, “During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.” Human submission to sovereign authority is influenced by materialism and self-interest, and that temporal power is superior to ecclesiastical power. Fear of death and the need for security are the psychological foundations both of worldly prudence and of civilization itself.
In 1666, Hobbes’s enemies in the clergy declared that the Plague and the Great Fire of London of 1665–66 revealed God’s wrath against England for harboring an atheist in Hobbes. The British Parliament wanted Hobbes’s Leviathan to be investigated for atheist tendencies. Hobbes was terrified of being branded a heretic—he burned many of his papers and decided to avoid publishing anything on overtly political subjects in the future. King Charles II, whom Hobbes had tutored earlier in life, interceded on his behalf and quashed the motion.
Hobbes’s theories of the social contract were explored and reformulated by such later political theorists as John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes contributed to history, jurisprudence, geometry, theology, ethics, and the physics of gases.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Thomas Hobbes
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
Topics: Books, Praise
The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.
—Thomas Hobbes
I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Famous Last Words, Last Words
Obligation is thraldom, and thraldom is hateful.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Obligation
Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which every one in himself calleth religion.
—Thomas Hobbes
There are very few so foolish that they had not rather govern themselves than be governed by others.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Government
Curiosity is the lust of the mind.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Curiosity
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 may be many so wise as themselves.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Wisdom
A man’s conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Conscience
The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only.
—Thomas Hobbes
In the state of nature profit is the measure of right.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Profit
Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Understanding
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.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Religion
Prudence is but experience, which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Caution
Words are the money of fools.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Words
The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Secrets
Had I read as much as others, I had remained as ignorant as they.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Reading
Faith is a gift of God which man can neither give nor take away by promise of rewards or menaces of torture.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Faith, Belief
Words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Words
Leisure is the mother of philosophy.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Rest, Leisure, Philosophy
No mans error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Mistakes
Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Words
Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Science, Scientists
Opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotion to what men fear, and talking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth the natural seeds of religion
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Opinions
There is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind, while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: The Mind
Desire to know why, and how—curiosity, which is a lust of the mind, that a perseverance of delight in the continued and indefatigable generation of knowledge—exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal pleasure.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: The Mind, Knowledge, Curiosity
Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: War
Sudden glory is the passion which makes those grimaces called laughter.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Glory
Laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Laughter
He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Prison
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
John Locke English Philosopher
Francis Bacon English Philosopher
Baruch Spinoza Dutch Philosopher
Rene Descartes French Mathematician, Philosopher
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz German Philosopher, Mathematician
Niccolo Machiavelli Florentine Political Philosopher
Jeremy Bentham British Philosopher, Economist
Aristotle Ancient Greek Philosopher
David Hume Scottish Philosopher, Historian
Montesquieu French Political Philosopher