Leviathan Quotations

Income taxes are responsible for the transformation of the Federal government from one of limited powers into a vast leviathan whose tentacles reach into almost every aspect of American life.

Moreover, it is difficult to reconcile Hobbes’s distrust for the individual with his confidence in the altruistic nature of the individual or individuals who will oversee and control the Leviathan. Are not the latter also of flesh and blood? Hobbes seems to be saying that man’s nature cannot be trusted but the nature of a ruler or a ruling assembly of men can be trusted. How so?

They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that dislike it, heresy; and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.

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

The Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.

Where there is no common power, there is no law

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

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.

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

Hell is Truth Seen Too Late.