Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.
Faith is a gift of God, which man can neither give nor take away by promise of rewards or menace of torture.
Competition of praise inclineth to a reverence of antiquity. For men contend with the living, not with the dead.
All men, among themselves, are by nature equal. The inequality we now discern hath its spring from the civil law.
Corporations are may lesser commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man.
It is many times with a fraudulent Design that men stick their corrupt Doctrine with the Cloves of other mens Wit.
Wisdom, properly so called, is nothing else but this: the perfect knowledge of the truth in all matters whatsoever.
That wee have of Geometry, which is the mother of all Naturall Science, wee are not indebted for it to the Schools.
Ignorance of the law is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the laws to which he is subject.
If men are naturally in a state of war, why do they always carry arms and why do they have keys to lock their doors?
The end of knowledge is power ... the scope of all speculation is the performing of some action or thing to be done.
A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him.
Of all Discourse , governed by desire of Knowledge, there is at last an End , either by attaining, or by giving over.
A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.
True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood.
To say God spake or appeared as he is in his own nature, is to deny his Infiniteness, Invisibility, Incomprehensibility.
The first author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as He presented to his sight.
The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.
And seeing every man is presumed to do all things in order to his own benefit, no man is a fit Arbitrator in his own cause
All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.
Prudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men in those things they equally apply themselves unto.
Government is necessary, not because man is naturally bad... but because man is by nature more individualistic than social.
Power as is really divided, and as dangerously to all purposes, by sharing with another an Indirect Power, as a Direct one.
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.
Prudence is but experience, which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.
Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind or imagined from tales publicly allowed, is religion; not allowed, superstition.
From whence it follows, that were the publique and private interest are most closely united, there is the publique most advanced.
The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.
I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.
A free man is he that, in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to.
For to accuse requires less eloquence, such is man's nature, than to excuse; and condemnation, than absolution, more resembles justice.
Let a man (as most men do) rate themselves as the highest Value they can; yet their true Value is no more than it is esteemed by others.
The object of man's desire is not to enjoy once only, and for one instant of time; but to assure for ever, the way of his future desires.
Subjects have no greater liberty in a popular than in a monarchial state. That which deceives them is the equal participation of command.
When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death.
Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter.
For all laws are general judgements, or sentences of the legislator; as also every particular judgement is a law to him whose case is judged.
For naturall Bloud is in like manner made of the fruits of the Earth; and circulating, nourisheth by the way, every Member of the Body of Man.
They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that dislike it, heresy; and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.
War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known.
The flesh endures the storms of the present alone; the mind, those of the past and future as well as the present. Gluttony is a lust of the mind.
When two, or more men, know of one and the same fact, they are said to be CONSCIOUS of it one to another; which is as much as to know it together.
A Covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void. For... no man can transfer or lay down his Right to save himself from Death.
For all uniting of strength by private men, is, if for evil intent, unjust; if for intent unknown, dangerous to the Publique, and unjustly concealed.
The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.
By how much one man has more experience of things past, than another, by so much also he is more prudent, and his expectations the seldomer fail him.
Whatsoever is the object of any man's Appetite or Desire; that is it which he for his part calleth Good: and the object of his Hate and Aversion, evil.
The value of all things contracted for, is measured by the appetite of the contractors, and therefore the just value is that which they be contented to give.
The original of all great and lasting societies consisted not in the mutual good will men had toward each other, but in the mutual fear they had of each other.
Opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotion to what men fear, and talking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth the natural seeds of religion