Thomas Hobbes

The greatest good is the preservation of life.

The true and only foundation of civil society is the mutual transfer of rights.

The fear of death, and wounds, and other corporeal harms, is the greatest motive to obedience.

For there is no power on earth to be compared with him.

The will of the sovereign is the law.

The liberty of a subject lieth therefore only in those things which in regulating their actions the sovereign hath praetermitted.

The desire of riches is a passion that is never satisfied.

The natural state of man is a state of war.

The only way to avoid the horrors of the state of nature is to submit to an absolute sovereign.

I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death.

Curiosity is the lust of the mind.

Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon with them: but they are the money of fools.

The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject but man only.

Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war.

The voluntary acts of every man, the private will, desire, and appetite of every man.

The right of nature, which writers commonly call jus naturale, is the liberty each man hath to use his own power.

Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves.

Fear of death is the beginning of all civil societies.