Quotes by Thomas Hobbes

[Sovereign]

"Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind as that, though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together the difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he. 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

Leviathan (Chap 1.13)​

• Give an inch, he'll take an ell.
  
  • Liberty and Necessity (no. 111)

• To understand this for sense it is not required that a man should be a geometrician or a logician, but that he should be mad.
  
  • On the proposition that the volume generated by revolving the region under 1/x from 1 to infinity has finite volume. Quoted in Mathematical Maxims and Minims by N. Rose (1988)
    
• The passion of laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmities of others, or with our own formerly...
  
  • The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic Pt. I Human Nature (1640) Ch. 9
    
• ...in statu naturae Mensuram juris esse Utilitatem.
  
  • In the state of nature, Profit is the measure of Right.
  • De Cive (1642)
    
• "For he that hath strength enough to protect all, wants not sufficiency to oppresse all."
  
  • De Cive "Of the right of him, whether Counsell, or one Man onely, who hath the supreme power in the City" (1642) Ch. 6