Thomas Hobbes

“ And while we consider man in most passions, as of anger, ambition, covetousness, vain glory, and the like, that tend to the excluding of natural equality, it is true. But without these passions, there is an easy rule to know upon a sudden, whether the action I be to do, be against the law of nature, or not. And it is but this: That a man imagine himself in place of the party with whom he hath to do, and reciprocally him in his. Which is no more but a changing, as it were, of the scales. For every man’s passion weigheth heavy in his own scale, but not in the scale of his neighbour. ”

“ Philosophy, therefore, the child of the world and your own mind, is within yourself; perhaps not fashioned yet, but like the world its father, as it was in the beginning, a thing confused. Do, therefore, as the statuaries do, who, by hewing off that which is superfluous, do not make but find the image. Or imitate the creation: if you will be a philosopher in good earnest, let your reason move upon the deep of your own cogitations and experience; those things that lie in confusion must be set asunder, distinguished, and every one stamped with its own name set in order ”

“ Of the Consequence or Train of Imagination By Consequence, or train of thoughts, I understand that succession of one thought to another which is called, to distinguish it from discourse in words, mental discourse.
When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently. But as we have no imagination, whereof we have not formerly had sense, in whole or in parts; so we have no transition from one imagination to another, whereof we never had the like before in our senses. ”

“ The legislator in all Commonwealths is only the sovereign, be he one man, as in a monarchy, or one assembly of men, as in a democracy or aristocracy. For the legislator is he that maketh the law. And the Commonwealth only prescribes and commandeth the observation of those rules which we call law: therefore the Commonwealth is the legislator. But the Commonwealth is no person, nor has capacity to do anything but by the representative, that is, the sovereign; and therefore the sovereign is the sole legislator. ”

“ I think you need not now have a catalogue, either of the vices, or of the crimes, or of the follies of the greatest part of them that composed the Long Parliament; than which greater cannot be in the world. What greater vices than irreligion, hypocrisy, avarice and cruelty; which have appeared so eminently in the actions of Presbyterian members and Presbyterian ministers? What greater crimes than blaspheming and killing God’s anointed? which was done by the hands of the Independents, but by the folly and first treason of the Presbyterians, who betrayed and sold him to his murderers? ”