Thomas Hobbes War Quotations

The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.

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.

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.

War consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known.

Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

Those men that are so remissly governed that they dare take up arms to defend or introduce an opinion, are still in war, and their condition not peace, but only a cessation of arms for fear of one another, and they live as it were in the precincts of battle continually.

For WAR, consisteth not in Battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to content by Battle is sufficiently known.... So the nature of War, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.

For it can never be that war shall preserve life, and peace destroy it.

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry... no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

If men are naturally in a state of war, why do they always carry arms and why do they have keys to lock their doors?

To this war of every man against every man, this also in 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 cardinal virtues.