Thomas Hobbes

For by Art is created that great Leviathan called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE, (in Latin CIVITAS) which is but an Artificial Man; though of greater stature and strength than the Natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which the Sovereignty is an Artificial Soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body.

The value, or worth of a man, is as of all other things, his price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power: and therefore is not absolute; but a thing dependant on the need and judgement of another.

To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law: where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues.

For where no covenant hath preceded, there hath no right been transferred, and every man has right to every thing; and consequently, no action can be unjust.

The desires, and other passions of man, are in themselves no sin. No more are the actions that proceed from those passions, till they know a law that forbids them.

And therefore, as long as a man is in the condition of mere nature, (which is a condition of war,) as long as he has not bound himself by covenant to the contrary, every man has a right to every thing; even to one another's body.

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.

The greatest of human powers, is that which is compounded of the powers of most men, united by consent, in one person, natural, or civil, that has the use of all their powers depending on his will; such as is the power of a Common-wealth: or depending on the wills of each particular; such as is the power of a faction, or of divers factions leagued.

Rebellion is a disease that proceeds from the ignorance of the people, and the ambition of the few.

For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within; why may we not say, that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life?

Leisure is the mother of Philosophy.

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; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own judgement, and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto.

Ignorance of the causes, and original constitution of right, equity, law, and justice, disposeth a man to make custom and example the rule of his actions.

As if it were not enough to have been once in a war, but must also be perpetually in a posture of war.

The source of all felicity and unhappiness, is the love of ourselves.

For the laws of nature, as I have shewed in the end of the fifteenth chapter, are immutable and eternal; but the force and efficacy of these laws depend upon the security which men have of being able to perform them.

For it is not the bare receiving of a man's message, that makes him an ambassador, but the accepting of his person.

For the Passions that most of all disturb the mind of man, are such as depend on the expectation of the future.

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 right of all sovereigns is derived from the people, not from God.