Thomas Hobbes Quotes

The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.

Whether one believes in evolution, intelligent design, or Divine Creation, one thing is certain. Since the beginning of history, human beings have been at war with each other, under the pretext of religion, ideology, ethnicity and other reasons. And no civilization has ever willingly given up its most powerful weapons.

As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.

Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them.

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry... no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; 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.

With men, the state of nature is not a state of peace, but war.

In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion.

To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.

There was nothing there but black water and American fire power.

For the victor peace means the preservation of the position of power which he has secured. For the vanquished it means resigning himself to the position left to him.

Either war is obsolete, or men are.

Alfred Nobel's discoveries are characteristic; powerful explosives can help men perform admirable tasks. They are also a means to terrible destruction in the hands of the great criminals who lead peoples to war.

Peace is the happy natural state of man; war is corruption and disgrace.

We can bomb the world to pieces, but we can't bomb it into peace.

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

Remember that politics, colonialism, imperialism and war also originate in the human brain.

Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography.

It goes without saying that when survival is threatened, struggles erupt between peoples, and unfortunate wars between nations result.

Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Coups are chaotic.

When men and women were running around in a state of nature (by which is meant an absence of government, not an absence of clothing), …

When men cease to fight — they cease to be — Men

War and unrest appeal to me more than good bourgeois order. Brutality is respected, the people need wholesome fear. They want to fear someone. They want someone to frighten them and make them shudderingly submissive.

If we allow the passions of our men to get full command then indeed will this war become a reproach to the names of liberty and civilization.

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue and thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never solves anything, I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The Ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more disputes in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.