By how much one man has more experience of things past, than another, by so much also he is more prudent, and his expectations the seldomer fail him.
The Pacts and Covenants, by which the parts of this Body Politique were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that Fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced by God in the Creation.
The law is the public conscience.
The Enemy has been here in the night of our natural ignorance, and sown the tares of spiritual errors.
A Covenant not to defend my selfe from force, by force, is always voyd.
For all uniting of strength by private men, is, if for evil intent, unjust; if for intent unknown, dangerous to the Publique, and unjustly concealed.
The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.
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.
Opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotion to what men fear, and talking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth the natural seeds of religion.
The power of a man is his present means to obtain some future apparent good.
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 reputation of power IS power.
To understand this for sense it is not required that a man should be a geometrician or a logician, but that he should be mad.
There is more in Mersenne than in all the universities together.
True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood.
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.
Setting themselves against reason, as often as reason is against them.
That wee have of Geometry, which is the mother of all Naturall Science, wee are not indebted for it to the Schools.
As soon as a thought darts, I write it down.
Covenants without swords are but words.