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How Did Thomas Hobbes Influence Government

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“Curiosity is the lust of the mind.”-Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes was a man that left an eternal influence on political thought. Hobbes was born in Westport, Wiltshire on April 5, 1588. He was an English philosopher that made an impact which changed the people’s point of view on government. His contributions were small but frequent. “People are selfish. They are moved chiefly by the desire for power and by fear of others. Thus, without an all-powerful sovereign to rule them, their lives would be "poor, nasty, brutish, and short."- Thomas Hobbes. He argued that we should have equal rights and that no one should have power over someone else. This influenced the government that the society would not survive without a well-built government and without the thoughts of Thomas Hobbes, people wouldn’t have the rights they have today. Thomas Hobbes had a significant amount of events in his early life that led him to become important. During his early life, his father abandoned him and his two brothers and left them with their uncle. By the time Hobbes was six he was already an outstanding student of classical languages, those languages were Latin and Greek. At age 14 he attended …show more content…

The book was written during the English Civil Wars. In the book, he argues for the need of a social contract that made people come together all at once into political societies and agree to stand by the rules and accept tasks to protect themselves and anyone else. He also made a rule saying that upheaval and other things with a “state of nature” - (a pre-government state in which individuals' actions are bound only by those individuals' desires and restraints)” - could only be prevented by a strong government, a government with the power of Leviathan (a sea creature), and that the government would protect people from

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