"The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life."
"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."
"During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man."
"Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation."
"All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain."
"That a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defense of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself."
"No man's error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it."
"Such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves."
"Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another."
"Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech."
"He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy."
"Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy."
"Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues."
"The disembodied spirit is immortal; there is nothing of it that can grow old or die. But the embodied spirit sees death on the horizon as soon as its day dawns."
"A man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force, to take away his life."
"In the state of nature profit is the measure of right."
"The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only."
"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 praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living."
"Prudence is but experience, which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto."
"A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous."
"Curiosity is the lust of the mind."
"I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark."
"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."
"Words are the money of fools."
