Saturday, April 25, 2009

Thomas Hobbes


1. "Another doctrine repugnant to civil society, is that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of good and evil. For a man's conscience and his judgement are the same thing, and as the judgement, so also the conscience may be erroneous.”
2. "A Person, is the same that an Actor is, both on the Stage and in common Conversation."
3. "Desire to know why, and how -- curiosity, which is a lust of the mind, that a perseverance of delight in the continued and indefatigable generation of knowledge -- exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal pleasure."
4. “Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy.”
5. "No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute Knowledge of Fact."
6. "Reason is the Soul of the Law."
7. "The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present."
8. “There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.”
9. “The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only.”
10. “There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.”
11. “The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.”
12. "The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions."
13. “True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood.”