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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.