"By art is created that great Leviathan called a commonwealth, or state, (in Latin civitas) which is but an artificial man; though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which, the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the magistrates, and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial joints; reward and punishment (by which fastened to the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform his duty) are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth and riches of all the particular members, are the strength; salus populi (the peoples safety) its business; counselors, by whom all things needful for it to know, are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity and laws, an artificial reason and will; concord, health; sedition, sickness; and civil war, death. Lastly, 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."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), Chapter 1
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Government
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Government
315 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Government →
Related Quotes
""Whatever is, is not," is the maxim of the anarchist, as often as anything comes across him in the shape of a law whi…"
"I am for Peace, for Retrenchment, and for Reform,—thirty years ago the great watchwords of the great Liberal Party."
"States are great engines moving slowly."
"Yet if thou didst but know how little wit governs this mighty universe."
"Perish commerce. Let the constitution live!"
"England is the mother of parliaments."
"Adeo ut omnes imperii virga sive bacillum vere superius inflexum sit."
"It [Calvinism] established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king."
"Oh, we are weary pilgrims; to this wilderness we bring A Church without a bishop, a State without a King."
"Well, will anybody deny now that the Government at Washington, as regards its own people, is the strongest government…"