Thomas Hobbes

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.

The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.

Prudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.

The passions that incline men to peace are fear of death, desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living, and a hope by their industry to obtain them.

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

The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.

Such truth as opposed no man's profit nor pleasure is to all men welcome.

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

Fear of things invisible in the natural seed of that which everyone in himself called religion.

Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon with them, but they are the money of fools.

All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called "Facts". They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.

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

The life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Leisure is the mother of philosophy.

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

I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

Liberties … depend on the silence of the law.

The papacy is not other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.

Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues.

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.

For as the nature of foul weather, lieth not in a shower or two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.

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.

They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that mislike it, heresy: and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.

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

Words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.

By art is created that great Leviathan, called a commonwealth or state, (in Latin civitas) which is but an artificial man … and in which, the sovereignty is an artificial soul.

Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.