"Thomas Hobbes has always been thought of as the arch materialist, the first man to uphold go-getting as a creed. But that is a travesty of Hobbes's opinion. He was a go-getter in a sense, but it was the going, not the getting he extolled. The race had no finishing post as Hobbes conceived it. The great thing about the race was to be in it, to be a contestant in the attempt to make the world a better place, and it was a spiritual death he had in mind when he said that to forsake the course is to die. 'There is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind while we live here,' he told us in Leviathan, 'because life itself is but a motion and can never be without desire, or without fear, no more than without sense'; 'there can be no contentment but in proceeding.' I agree."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Peter Medawar, The Effecting of All Things Possible (1969)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Hobbes
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Thomas Hobbes
1588 – 1679
englischer Mathematiker, Staatstheoretiker und Philosoph
134 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Thomas Hobbes →
Related Quotes
"I know not how the world will receive it, nor how it may reflect on those that shall seem to favor it. For in a way b…"
"The passion of laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselv…"
"Now I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark."
"For he that hath strength enough to protect all, wants not sufficiency to oppresse all."
"And this Feare of things invisible, is the naturall Seed of that, which every one in himself calleth Religion; and in…"
"To understand this for sense it is not required that a man should be a geometrician or a logician, but that he should…"
"...in statu naturae Mensuram juris esse Utilitatem."
"Give an inch, he'll take an ell."
"No man is bound by the words themselves, either to kill himselfe, or any other man."
"He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but Mankind; which thoug…"