Thomas Hobbes Quotes
Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by Richard Tuck, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 90.
In this case, he was referring to the situation with the Barbary Pirates who had an incredible extortion racket going in the Mediterranean. If nations would pay them an annual sum each year, they would not attack and seize merchant ships of that country and sell the ships and goods while holding the sailors for ransom. Jefferson favored and authorized war—a naval attack which for many reasons the European nations had not done (they just paid the tribute). Then a peace treaty was finally signed—the first American Treaty.
Just like Spain and Persia, the Arabs by fighting lost not only more land, but also lost the respect of most of the non-Muslim War. The conscious decision to choose an irrational strategy that would cause loss of life, land and respect has none-the-less repeatedly been chosen by the Arab culture. much to its detriment. Azzam is one of the few Arabs to admit this to the non-Islamic World.
Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, jurisprudence, geometry, the physics of gases, theology, and ethics, as well as philosophy in general.
