Hobbes Quotes

No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute Knowledge of Fact. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues. ~ Thomas Hobbes

If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun. ~ Thomas Hobbes

The Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. ~ Thomas Hobbes

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. ~ Thomas Hobbes

A democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orators. The people are so readily moved by demagogues that control must be exercised by the government over speech and press. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Such truth, as opposeth no man's profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome. ~ Thomas Hobbes

The best proof of extraterrestrial intelligence is that they haven't contacted us. ~ Bill Watterson

Golden Rule has been rediscovered many times: by the authors of Leviticus and the Mahabharata; by Hillel, Jesus, and Confucius; by the Stoic philosophers of the Roman Empire; by social contract theorists such as Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke; and by moral philosophers such as Kant in his categorical imperative. ~ Steven Pinker

It would be a great mistake to suppose that it is sufficient not to become personal yourself. For by showing a man quite quietly that he is wrong, and that what he says and thinks is incorrect - a process which occurs in every dialectical victory - you embitter him more than if you used some rude or insulting expression. Why is this? Because, as Hobbes observes, all mental pleasure consists in being able to compare oneself with others to one's own advantage. - Nothing is of greater moment to a man than the gratification of his vanity, and no wound is more painful than that which is inflicted on it. Hence such phrases as "Death before dishonour," and so on. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

The Scripture was written to shew unto men the kingdom of God; and to prepare their minds to become his obedient subjects; leavingthe world, and the Philosophy thereof, to the disputation of men, for the exercising of their natural Reason. ~ Thomas Hobbes

He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himselfe, not this, or that particular man; but Man-kind; ~ Thomas Hobbes

He that has most experience [is] so much more prudent than he that is new, as not to be equalled by any advantage of natural and extemporary wit- though many young men think the contrary. ~ Thomas Hobbes

You know what's the rage this year? ...Hats. ~ Bill Watterson

Subjects have no greater liberty in a popular than in a monarchial state. That which deceives them is the equal participation of command. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Calvin: Dear Santa, before I submit life to your scrutiny, I demand to know who made YOU the matter of my fate?! Who are YOU to question my behavior, HUH??? What gives you the right?!
Hobbes: Santa makes the toys, so he gets to decide who to give them to.
Calvin: Oh. ~ Bill Watterson

In his eyes Hobbes, who had savaged the Church in Leviathan (1651), was unambiguously wicked, and excluding him was a pleasure. He told his friend Thomas Tyers that he had 'scorned' to quote Hobbes 'because I did not like his principles'.6 Among the texts he did cite, however, was John Bramhall's 1658 Castigations of Mr Hobbes, a book now known, if at all, for having been praised by T. S. Eliot. For ~ Henry Hitchings

The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is a lust of the mind. ~ Thomas Hobbes

The first author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as He presented to his sight ... ~ Thomas Hobbes

Humans are driven by a perpetual and restless desire of power. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Corporations are may lesser commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man. ~ Thomas Hobbes

I'm resolving to just wing it and see what happens. ~ Bill Watterson

Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men's preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men's wills such as men would have them. ~ Thomas Hobbes

My share. I hate owing anyone anything. Don't you? ~ Candace Bushnell

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

What?" She gasps. "Who did you do it with? You can't go out there and pick up some random stranger. Oh no, Carrie. You didn't. You didn't pick up some guy at a bar. ~ Candace Bushnell

It's gratifying to hear that from people who care about comic art. I never know what to make of it when someone writes to say, "Calvin and Hobbes is the best strip in the paper. I like it even more than Nancy." ~ Bill Watterson

As, in Sense, that which is really within us, is (as I have said before) only Motion, caused by the action of external objects, but in appearance; to the Sight, Light and Color; to the Ear, Sound; to the Nostril, Odor, &c. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Nevertheless, there seems good reason for adhering to the common usage, and calling (as indeed Hobbes himself does in other places) the word sun the name of the sun, and not the name of our idea of the sun. For names are not intended only to make the hearer conceive what we conceive, but also to inform him what we believe. ~ John Stuart Mill

The power of a man is his present means to obtain some future apparent good. ~ Thomas Hobbes

As soon as a thought darts, I write it down. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Maybe you can't have it both ways. His life and your life. How do you put two lives together, anyway? ~ Candace Bushnell

Hell is truth seen too late. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Every day of my life I have to add another name to the list of people who p*ss me off
Calvin, Calvin & Hobbes ~ Bill Watterson

It's my turn, to take a leap into the darkness! ~ Thomas Hobbes

["Love is the love of one {singularly,} with desire to be singularly beloved." - Hobbes{Leviathan, (1651), Part I, Chapter VI}.] ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Nor can a man any more live, whose Desires are at an end, than he, whose Senses and Imaginations are at a stand. ~ Thomas Hobbes

For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself ~ Thomas Hobbes

Walker-thinkers have found various ways to accommodate the gifts that their walking brings. Caught paperless on his walks in the Czech enclaves of Iowa, maestro Dvořák scribbles the string quartets that visited his brain on his starched white shirt cuffs (so the legend goes). More proactively, Thomas Hobbes fashioned a walking stick for himself with an inkwell attached, and modern poet Mary Oliver leaves pencils in the trees along her usual pathways, in case a poem descends during her rambles. ~ Lyanda Lynn Haupt

As if it were Injustice to sell dearer than we buy; or to give more to a man than he merits. The value of all things contracted for, is measured by the Appetite of the Contractors: and therefore the just value, is that which they be contented to give. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Scientific Progress goes boink? ~ Bill Watterson

Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed, [is] religion; not allowed, superstition. ~ Thomas Hobbes

For naturall Bloud is in like manner made of the fruits of the Earth; and circulating, nourisheth by the way, every Member of the Body of Man. ~ Thomas Hobbes

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

It is manifest therefore that they who have sovereign power, are immediate rulers of the church under Christ, and all others but subordinate to them. If that were not, but kings should command one thing upon pain of death, and priests another upon pain of damnation, it would be impossible that peace and religion should stand together. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Honoring the value of competence and steadfastness requires a generosity of spirit and a curbing of the passion for envy, traits that few people value and fewer still cultivate and acquire. Not until there is more of Smith and less of Hobbes in the human heart, will the majority of people prefer peaceful and boring market relations to the violent and exciting relations between coercer and coerced, predator and victim ~ Thomas Szasz

That Wisedome is acquired, not by reading of Books, but of Men. Consequently whereunto, those persons, that for the most part can give no other proof of being wise, take great delight to shew what they think they have read in men, by uncharitable censures of one another behind their backs. ~ Thomas Hobbes

When a man tells me God hath spoken in a dream, I know he dreamt that God spoke to him. ~ Thomas Hobbes

I hope some historian will confirm that I was the first cartoonist to use the word 'booger' in a newspaper comic strip. ~ Bill Watterson

And because the constitution of a mans Body, is in continuall mutation; it is impossible that all the same things should alwayes cause in him the same Appetites, and aversions; much lesse can all men consent, in the Desire of almost any one and the same Object.
Good Evill
But whatsoever is the object of any mans Appetite or Desire; that is it, which he for his part calleth Good: And the object of his Hate, and Aversion, evill, And of his contempt, Vile, and Inconsiderable. For these words of Good, evill, and Contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: There being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common Rule of Good and evill, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves; but from the Person of the man (where there is no Common-wealth;) or, (in a Common-wealth,) From the Person that representeth it; or from an Arbitrator or Judge, whom men disagreeing shall by consent set up, and make his sentence the Rule thereof. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Wisdom, properly so called, is nothing else but this: the perfect knowledge of the truth in all matters whatsoever. ~ Thomas Hobbes

The best men are the least suspicious of fraudulent purposes. ~ Thomas Hobbes

I'm a realist. Just because you had sex once doesn't mean you have to fall in love. ~ Candace Bushnell

There be as many persons of a king, as there be petty constables in his kingdom. And so there are, or else he cannot be obeyed. But I never said that a king, and every one of his persons, are the same substance. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Liberty, to define it, is nothing other than the absence of impediments to motion ~ Thomas Hobbes

Well, remember what you said, because in a day or two, I'll have a witty and blistering retort! You'll be devastated THEN ~ Bill Watterson

It's hard to think of another body of work that is more universally beloved - I don't think I've ever met someone who has encountered 'Calvin and Hobbes' without falling for them. ~ Anthony Marra

The Present only has a being in Nature; things Past have a being in the Memory only, but things to come have no being at all; the Future but a fiction of the mind. ~ Thomas Hobbes

And I profess still, that whatsoever the church of England (the church, I say, not every doctor) shall forbid me to say in matterof faith, I shall abstain from saying it, excepting this point, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for my sins. As for other doctrines, I think it unlawful, if the church define them, for any member of the church to contradict them. ~ Thomas Hobbes

HOBBES:
If you don't get a goodnight kiss you get Kafka dreams. ~ Bill Watterson

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

Primitive man's life in Hobbes' famous words, was short, brutish, and nasty; and this very savagery and anxiety became the justification for an absolute order established, like Descartes' ideal world, by a single providential mind and will: that of the absolute ruler or monarch. Until men were incorporated into Leviathan, that is, the all-powerful state through which the king's will was carried out, they were dangerous to their fellows and a burden to themselves. ~ Lewis Mumford

A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Respice finem; that is to say, in all your actions, look often upon what you would have, as the thing that directs all your thoughts in the way to attain it. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Why do magazines do this to women?" Miranda complains now, glaring at Vogue. "It's all about creating insecurity. Trying to make women feel like they're not good enough. And when women don't feel like they're good enough, guess what?"
"What?" I ask, picking up the grocery bag.
"Men win. That's how they keep us down," she concludes.
"Except the problem with women's magazines is that they're written by women," I point out.
"That only shows you how deep this thing goes. Men have made women coconspirators in their own oppression. I mean, if you spend all your time worrying about leg hair, how can you possibly have time to take over the world? ~ Candace Bushnell

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power. But the person who either acquires, or succeeds to a great fortune, does not necessarily acquire or succeed to any political power, either civil or military. His fortune may, perhaps, afford him the means of acquiring both; but the mere possession of that fortune does not necessarily convey to him either. The power which that possession immediately and directly conveys to him, is the power of purchasing a certain command over all the labour, or over all the produce of labour which is then in the market. His fortune is greater or less, precisely in proportion to the extent of this power, or to the quantity either of other men's labour, or, what is the same thing, of the produce of other men's labour, which it enables him to purchase or command. The exchangeable value of every thing must always be precisely equal to the extent of this power which it conveys to its owner. ~ Adam Smith

Words are the money of fools. ~ Thomas Hobbes

There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity 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

Prophecy is many times the principal cause of the events foretold. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Reason is the Soul of the Law. ~ Thomas Hobbes

My application's not bought,' I am telling them, calling into the darkness of the red cave that opens out before closed eyes. 'I am not just a boy who plays tennis. I have an intricate history. Experiences and feelings. I'm complex.
'I read,' I say. 'I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it." My instincts concerning syntax and mechanics are better than your own, I can tell, with due respect. But it transcends the mechanics. I'm not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you'd let me, talk and talk. Let's talk about anything. I believe the influence of Kierkegaard on Camus is underestimated. I believe Dennis Gabor may very well have been the Antichrist. I believe Hobbes is just Rousseau in a dark mirror. I believe, with Hegel, that transcendence is absorption. I could interface you guys right under the table,' I say. 'I'm not just a creatus, manufactured, conditioned, bred for a function.'

I open my eyes. 'Please don't think I don't care. ~ David Foster Wallace

Mom says death is as natural as birth, and it's all part of the life cycle.
She says we don't really understand it, but there are many things we don't understand, and we just have to do the best we can with the knowledge we have.
I guess that makes sense. ~ Bill Watterson

Everybody I know fails the acid test of friendship. ~ Bill Watterson

For to accuse requires less eloquence, such is man's nature, than to excuse; and condemnation, than absolution, more resembles justice. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Hobbes clearly proves, that every creature Lives in a state of war by nature. ~ Jonathan Swift

When the nature of the thing is incomprehensible, I can acquiesce in the Scripture: but when the signification of words is incomprehensible, I cannot acquiesce in the authority of a Schoolman. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Yow. Guys can be so insecure. ~ Candace Bushnell

The universe, the whole mass of things that are, is corporeal, that is to say, body, and hath the dimensions of magnitude, length, breadth and depth. Every part of the universe is 'body' and that which is not 'body' is no part of the universe, and because the universe is all, that which is no part of it is nothing, and consequently nowhere. ~ Thomas Hobbes

I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death. ~ Thomas Hobbes

CALVIN: Hey, I got some mail! It's a Valentine card.
HOBBES: From Susie Derkins!
CALVIN: It says "Please be my Valentine."
HOBBES: You're Susie's Valentine!
CALVIN: I'm not her Valentine just because I got this in the mail, am I? Does the Post Master General know about this?
HOBBES: Calvin and Susie, sitting in a tree-ee! Kay-eye-ess-ess-eye-en-gee!
CALVIN: I don't have the KISS her, do I?! Is that what Valentines do??! Oh, gross!
HOBBES: First comes lo-ove, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage!
CALVIN: This can't be happening! I need a lawyer! She can't make me be her Valentine!
HOBBES: Here she comes! Here comes Susie!
SUSIE: Hi, Calvin.
CALVIN: Get away from me! I'm not your Valentine! Take your card back! Eww! Girls! YECCHH!
SUSIE: That card wasn't for YOU, you Moron. Didn't you read the back of the envelope?
CALVIN: "Calvin, please give this to Hobbes." HOBBES?!
HOBBES: Me? Really? Hot dog! Smooch City, here I come! ~ Bill Watterson

Hobbes: "Whatcha doin'?"
Calvin: "Getting rich!"
Hobbes: "Really?"
Calvin: "Yep. I'm writing a self-help book! There's a huge market for this stuff."
Calvin: "First you convince people there's something wrong with them. That's easy because advertising has already conditioned people to feel insecure about their weight, looks, social status, sex appeal, and so on."
Calvin: "Next, you convince them that the problem is not their fault and that they're victims of larger forces. That's easy, because it's what people believe anyway. Nobody wants to be responsible for his own situation."
Calvin: "Finally, you convince them that with your expert advice and encouragement, they can conquer their problem and be happy."
Hobbes: "Ingenious. What problem will you help people solve?"
Calvin: "Their addiction to self-help books!"
Calvin: "My book is called, "Shut up and stop whining: How to do something with your life besides think about yourself.""
Hobbes: "You should probably wait for the advance before you buy anything."
Calvin: "The trouble is... If my program works, I won't be able to write a sequel. ~ Bill Watterson

[Calvin and Hobbes are playing Scrabble.]
Calvin: Ha! I've got a great word and it's on a "Double word score" box!
Hobbes: "ZQFMGB" isn't a word! It doesn't even have a vowel!
Calvin: It is so a word! It's a worm found in New Guinea! Everyone knows that!
Hobbes: I'm looking it up.
Calvin: You do, and I'll look up that 12-letter word you played with all the Xs and Js!
Hobbes: What's your score for ZQFMGB?
Calvin: 957. ~ Bill Watterson

Love is a person's idea about his/her needs in other person what you are attracted to. ~ Thomas Hobbes

In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides adduces a change in language as a major factor in Athens's descent from dysfunctional democracy through demagoguery into tyranny and anarchy: people began to define things in any way they pleased, he says, and the "normally accepted meaning of words" broke down. In his account of the Catiline crisis in republican Rome, Sallust has Cato the Younger identify the misuse of language - specifically the scission of word and meaning - as the underlying cause of the threat to the state. Society, Cato says, has lost the "vera vocabula rerum," literally, the "true names of things."18 In seventeenth-century England, Thomas Hobbes lived through a civil war he believed had been caused in significant measure by a war of words about religion - spread through the pervasive pamphleteering that printing had made possible - that had fatally weakened the linguistic common ground on which an ordered state depends. ~ Mark John Thompson

The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Silence is sometimes an argument of Consent ~ Thomas Hobbes

Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Religions are like pills, which must be swallowed whole without chewing. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Now I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark ~ Thomas Hobbes

The beliefs and behaviour of the Restoration reflect the theories of society put forward by Thomas Hobbes in The Leviathan, which was written in exile in Paris and published in 1651. Like many texts of the time, The Leviathan is an allegory. It recalls mediaeval rather than Renaissance thinking. The leviathan is the Commonwealth, society as a total organism, in which the individual is the absolute subject of state control, represented by the monarch. Man - motivated by self-interest - is acquisitive and lacks codes of behaviour. Hence the necessity for a strong controlling state, 'an artificial man', to keep discord at bay. Self-interest and stability become the keynotes of British society after 1660, the voice of the new middle-class bourgeoisie making itself heard more and more in the expression of values, ideals, and ethics. ~ Ronald Carter

I've never understood sexy lingerie. I mean, what's the point? The guy's only going to take it off. ~ Candace Bushnell

If God bestowed immortality on every man then when he made him, and he made many to whom he never purposed to give his saving grace, what did his Lordship think that God gave any man immortality with purpose only to make him capable of immortal torments? It is a hard saying, and I think cannot piously be believed. I am sure it can never be proved by the canonical Scripture. ~ Thomas Hobbes

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

To be seduced by Orators, as a Monarch by Flatterers. ~ Thomas Hobbes

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

Ambition, and Covetousnesse are Passions that are perpetually incumbent, and pressing. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another. ~ Thomas Hobbes