Famous Thomas Hobbes Quotes Explained
Thomas Hobbes was a 17th-century English philosopher whose 1651 book Leviathan is one of the founding texts of modern political philosophy and social contract theory. Hobbes's <em>Leviathan</em> (1651) is the founding text of modern political philosophy and the most-quoted source for his pessimistic anthropology. Below are eight of the most-cited lines.
Attributed to Thomas Hobbes:
“And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
What it means
From Leviathan, chapter 13, the most famous sentence in the work. Hobbes is describing the state of nature — life without an overarching sovereign — and arguing that the absence of common power produces a war of all against all in which civilised life becomes impossible. The five adjectives are the diagnosis the rest of Leviathan treats.
“The war of all against all.”
The First Part, Chapter 13, p. 62
What it means
Bellum omnium contra omnes — from Hobbes's De Cive (1642) and echoed in Leviathan. The phrase names Hobbes's account of pre-political life: not occasional combat but a permanent condition of mutual hostility produced by rough equality of capacity and competition for scarce goods.
Attributed to Thomas Hobbes:
“Words are the counters of wise men, but the money of fools.”
What it means
From Leviathan, chapter 4. Hobbes argues that the same words function differently for the careful and the careless: the philosopher uses them as tokens for arguments, while the credulous treat them as if they had independent value. The distinction grounds his attack on Scholastic verbalism.
“Curiosity is the lust of the mind.”
The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 26
What it means
From Leviathan, chapter 6, in Hobbes's catalogue of the passions. Curiosity is described as a desire for knowledge that resembles the appetitive passions in its drive and persistence; the comparison naturalises intellectual inquiry as a motivated activity rather than a disinterested one.
“Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.”
The First Part, Chapter 11, p. 51
What it means
From Leviathan, chapter 11. Hobbes's account of religion is naturalistic and genealogical: religious belief arises from the human tendency to assign causes to invisible powers when visible causes cannot be identified. The argument was politically explosive in 1651.
“Covenants without the sword are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.”
The Second Part, Chapter 17, p. 85
What it means
From Leviathan, chapter 17. Hobbes's argument for absolute sovereignty: agreements unenforced are agreements unfulfilled, and only a power capable of compelling compliance can give contracts the security required for civil life. The doctrine remains the standard objection to anarchist political theory.
Attributed to Thomas Hobbes:
“Liberty is the absence of external impediments to motion.”
What it means
From Hobbes's De Cive and refined in Leviathan, chapter 21. Liberty for Hobbes is a physical concept extended to political life: a person is free to the extent that he is not externally constrained from acting. The definition deliberately omits any reference to inner mastery or rational consent.
“Now I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.”
Last words
What it means
Reported by John Aubrey as one of Hobbes's last sayings. The line preserves the philosopher's wit at the end: a man who had spent his career arguing about what could and could not be known confronted death as the final unknown without theological consolation.