It is many times with a fraudulent Design that men stick their corrupt Doctrine with the Cloves of other mens Wit.
Interpretation
Hobbes warns against the deceitful influence of corrupt ideas disguised as wisdom from others.
In this quote, Thomas Hobbes critiques the tendency of individuals to spread their flawed beliefs by cloaking them in the appearance of wisdom borrowed from others. He suggests that this manipulation is often intentional and serves a fraudulent purpose, undermining genuine understanding and dialogue.
In practice
In a discussion about misinformation and propaganda, this quote illustrates how corruption can mask itself in borrowed credibility.
Baptism is the sacrament of allegiance of them that are to be received into the Kingdom of God, that is to say, into Eternal life, that is to say, to Remission of Sin. For as Eternal life was lost by the committing, so it is recovered by the remitting of men's sins.
Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
For it is not the shape, but their use, that makes them angels.
For to accuse requires less eloquence, such is man's nature, than to excuse; and condemnation, than absolution, more resembles justice.
Scientia potentia est, sed parva; quia scientia egregia rara est, nec proinde apparens nisi paucissimis, et in paucis rebus. Scientiae enim ea natura est, ut esse intelligi non possit, nisi ab illis qui sunt scientia praediti.
The end of knowledge is power ... the scope of all speculation is the performing of some action or thing to be done.
What I have experienced, and experienced repeatedly, is the silence of God. For many years, this was a distressing matter for me. I did not consider it an experience, but the absence of an experience.
We are spirit children of a loving Heavenly Father who placed us in mortality to see if we would choose - freely choose - to keep His commandments and come unto His Beloved Son. They do not compel us. They cannot, for that would interfere with the plan of happiness. And so there is in us a God-given desire to be responsible for our own choices.
Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.
No man is so poor as that. As well might the mountain streamlets say they have nothing worth giving to the sea, because they are not rivers. Give what you have. To some one, it may be better than you dare to think.
Let no man be sorry he has done good, because others concerned with him have done evil! If a man has acted right, he has done well, though along; if wrong, the sanction of all mankind will not justify him.
The very people who shudder over the cruelty of the hunter are apt to forget that slaughter, in the grimmest sense of the word, is a process they entrust daily to the butcher; and that unlike the game of the forests, even the dumbest creatures of the slaughterhouse know what is in store for them.
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