Thomas Hobbes Quotes

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

Belief and knowledge are considered to be two different things. But they are not.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

While it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world.

I believe in order that I may understand.

God forbid that Truth should be confined to Mathematical Demonstration!

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know.

I think that reality exists and that it's knowable.

It is of no help to us that there is an absolute truth of the matter of things because unfortunately, none of us are in a position to say definitively what that is - although we all think that we are.

Knowledge is true opinion.

The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

Our questions and answers are in part determined by the historical tradition in which we find ourselves. We apprehend truth from our own source within the historical tradition.

Knowledge consists in understanding the evidence that establishes the fact, not in the belief that it is a fact.

Knowledge is justified belief.

I go with what I know and what I see, and I believe in reality.

[It's] troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that's often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.

The typical person has no trouble believing without knowing. What people need to realize is simply that you do not need to believe to know.

Science is not wisdom.

The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.

Facts are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premises, but in the nature and parts of premises.

Belief in truth begins with doubting all that has hitherto been believed to be true.