Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau: Political Philosophy Key Concepts

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.

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

No man in civil society can be exempted from the laws of it: for if any man may do what he thinks fit, and there be no appeal on earth, for redress or security against any harm he shall do, I ask, whether he be not perfectly still in the state of nature, and so can be no part or member of that civil society.

John Locke | Second Treatise of Government

Wherever any number of men so unite into one society, as to quit everyone his executive power of the law of Nature, and to resign it to the public, there, and there only, is a political or civil society. Hence it is evident that absolute monarchy is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no form of civil government at all.

John Locke | Second Treatise of Government

The great and chief end, therefore, of men uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property; to which in the state of Nature there are many things wanting.

John Locke | Second Treatise of Government

So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel: First, Competition; Secondly, Diffidence; Thirdly, Glory. The first maketh men invade for Gain; the second, for Safety; and the third, for Reputation.

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all.

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.

John Locke | Second Treatise of Government

To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.

John Locke | Second Treatise of Government

Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.

John Locke | Second Treatise of Government

As usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to. When the governor, however intitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion.

John Locke | Second Treatise of Government

The power of the legislative, being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.

John Locke | Second Treatise of Government

The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands: for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others.

John Locke | Second Treatise of Government

God gave the World to Men in Common; But since he gave it them for their benefit, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and Rational, and Labour was to be his Title to it; not to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious.

John Locke | Second Treatise of Government

A liberty to follow my own will in all things where that rule prescribes not, not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man, as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of Nature.

John Locke | Second Treatise of Government

To avoid this state of war is one great reason of men's putting themselves into society, and quitting the state of nature: for where there is an authority, a power on earth, from which relief can be had by appeal, there the continuance of the state of war is excluded, and the controversy is decided by that power.

John Locke | Second Treatise of Government

The condition of man is a condition of war of every one against every one, in which case every one is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in preserving his life against his enemies; it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing, even to one another's body.

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

For by Art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMON-WEALTH, or STATE, which is but an Artificiall Man; though of greater stature and strength than the Naturall, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which, the Soveraignty is an Artificiall Soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body.

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

I put for a generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death.

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

Felicity is a continual progress of the desire, from one object to another; the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter.

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

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

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

Words are wise men's counters; they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools.

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

The Power of a Man is his present means, to obtain some future apparent Good.

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

True and false are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood.

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but Man-kind.

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

For such is the nature of man, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves.

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

The skill of making, and maintaining Common-wealths, consisteth in certain Rules, as doth Arithmetique and Geometry; not on Practise onely.

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war is of every man against every man.

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

That a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for Peace and defence 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.

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

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

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.

Thomas Hobbes | Leviathan

Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | The Social Contract

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | The Social Contract

The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | The Social Contract

The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | The Social Contract

Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | The Social Contract

What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | The Social Contract

The mere impulse of appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | The Social Contract

The people of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | The Social Contract

In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | The Social Contract

As soon as anyone says of the affairs of the state 'What do I care?' the state may be given up for lost.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | The Social Contract

If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | The Social Contract

There is no subjection so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | The Social Contract

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying 'This is mine,' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | Discourse on Inequality

I conceive two species of inequality among men: one which I call natural, or physical inequality; the other which may be termed moral, or political inequality, because it depends on a kind of convention, and is established by the common consent of mankind.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | Discourse on Inequality

The savage lives within himself; social man lives always outside himself; he knows how to live only in the opinion of others, it is from their judgment alone that he derives the sense of his own existence.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | Discourse on Inequality

It was iron and corn which first civilized men, and ruined humanity.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | Discourse on Inequality

Force made the first slaves; and their cowardice perpetuates their slavery.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | Discourse on Inequality

You are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and that the earth itself belongs to nobody.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | Discourse on Inequality

The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes on the contrary a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau | The Social Contract

The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Plato | The Republic

The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed of humanity itself, till philosophers become rulers in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers.

Plato | The Republic

Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

Plato | The Republic

Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.

Plato | The Republic

The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.

Plato | The Republic

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

Plato | The Republic

Appearance tyrannizes over truth.

Plato | The Republic

And then at this stage every dictator comes up with the notorious and typical demand: he asks the people for bodyguards to protect him, the people's champion.

Plato | The Republic

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty.

Plato | The Republic

Justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.

Plato | The Republic

When men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil.

Plato | The Republic

The punishment we suffer, if we refuse to take an interest in matters of government, is to live under the government of worse men.

Plato | The Republic

Too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery, both for private man and city.

Plato | The Republic

He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind.

Plato | The Republic

Man is by nature a political animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual.

Aristotle | Politics

For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends.

Aristotle | Politics

It is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state.

Aristotle | Politics

The state comes into being for the sake of living, but it exists for the sake of living well.

Aristotle | Politics

The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole.

Aristotle | Politics

Governments which have a regard to the common interest are constituted in accordance with strict principles of justice, and are therefore true forms; but those which regard only the interest of the rulers are all defective and perverted forms.

Aristotle | Politics

Of the above-mentioned forms, the perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy. For tyranny is a kind of monarchy which has in view the interest of the monarch only; oligarchy has in view the interest of the wealthy; democracy, of the needy: none of them the common good of all.

Aristotle | Politics

The law is reason unaffected by desire.

Aristotle | Politics

It is more proper that law should govern than any one of the citizens: upon the same principle, if it is advantageous to place the supreme power in some particular persons, they should be appointed to be only guardians, and the servants of the laws.

Aristotle | Politics

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

Aristotle | Politics

The many are more incorruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily corrupted than a little.

Aristotle | Politics

Inequality is everywhere at the bottom of faction, for in general faction arises from men's striving for what is equal.

Aristotle | Politics

The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest.

Aristotle | Politics

That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it; everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfil.

Aristotle | Politics

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

Aristotle | Politics

The greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity. Men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold.

Aristotle | Politics

It is clear that the best form of political association is one where power is vested in the middle class, large enough to be stronger than either of the opposing extremes.

Aristotle | Politics

In democracies the most potent cause of revolution is the unprincipled character of popular leaders.

Aristotle | Politics

Where the laws are not authoritative, demagogues arise. For the populace becomes a monarch when it turns from many into a single composite.

Aristotle | Politics

But of all the things which contribute to the permanence of constitutions, the most important is the adaptation of education to the form of government, and yet in our own day this principle is universally neglected.

Aristotle | Politics

The government is everywhere sovereign in the state, and the constitution is in fact the government.

Aristotle | Politics

Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.

Machiavelli | The Prince

It is far safer to be feared than loved, because love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.

Machiavelli | The Prince

The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.

Machiavelli | The Prince

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires.

Machiavelli | The Prince

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.

Machiavelli | The Prince

Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.

Machiavelli | The Prince

Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them.

Machiavelli | The Prince

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

Machiavelli | The Prince

Men sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.

Machiavelli | The Prince

Men sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.

Machiavelli | The Prince

The best fortress is to be found in the love of the people, for although you may have fortresses they will not save you if you are hated by the people.

Machiavelli | The Prince

There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you.

Machiavelli | The Prince

Men are so simple, and governed so absolutely by their present needs, that he who wishes to deceive will never fail in finding willing dupes.

Machiavelli | The Prince

Wisdom consists of knowing how to distinguish the nature of trouble, and in choosing the lesser evil.

Machiavelli | The Prince

A man who is used to acting in one way never changes; he must come to ruin when the times, in changing, no longer are in harmony with his ways.

Machiavelli | The Prince

It is a common fault of men not to reckon on storms in fair weather.

Machiavelli | The Prince