There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.

Fear of things invisible in the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.

I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.

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.

When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death.

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

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.

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.

It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.

Words are the money of fools.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him.