They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that dislike it, heresy; and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.
Interpretation
The quote discusses the subjective nature of opinions and how they are judged differently based on acceptance or rejection.
In this quote, Thomas Hobbes highlights the duality of opinions and the tendency of people to label prevailing beliefs as 'opinions' while rejecting opposing views as 'heresy'. This reflects the subjective nature of belief systems, suggesting that what is deemed a valid perspective by some can be dismissed as heretical by others, despite both being merely private opinions.
In practice
During a debate about free speech, this quote can illustrate how people respond differently to controversial opinions.
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.
The history of liberty is the history of limitations on the power of government, not the increase of it. When we resist, therefore, the concentration of power, we are resisting the processes of death, because concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction of human liberties.
The penalty for getting mugged in an American city and losing your ID is that you can't fly home.
I am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture and our heritage. Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.
I well remember it being said to me by an occultist of great experience that two things are necessary for safety in occultism, right motives and right associates.
Saints cannot exist without a community, as they require, like all of us, nurturance by a people who, while often unfaithful, preserve the habits necessary to learn the story of God.
To poison a nation, poison its stories. A demoralised nation tells demoralised stories to itself. Beware of the storytellers who are not fully conscious of the importance of their gifts, and who are irresponsible in the application of their art: they
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