Daily Inspiration Quote by Thomas Hobbes

Hobbes is picking a fight with the comforting myth that conscience is some private hotline to the moral truth. By collapsing “conscience” into “judgment,” he strips it of its sacred aura and treats it as just another human faculty: fallible, interest-shaped, and frequently wrong. It’s a cold splash of water in an age that liked to dress inner conviction in the robes of divine certainty.

The intent is political as much as philosophical. Hobbes lived through England’s civil wars, when competing factions killed and governed in the name of conscience. If everyone treats their inner certainty as a trump card against law, you don’t get freedom; you get a moral arms race. His subtext: the loudest appeal to conscience often masks something less noble - factional loyalty, fear, self-justification - and its very sincerity makes it more dangerous. An “erroneous” conscience doesn’t feel erroneous from the inside.

Rhetorically, the line works because it sounds almost tautological, then detonates. “Conscience and judgment is the same thing” is a demystifying equation; the follow-up clause turns that equation into a warning label. Hobbes isn’t arguing that morality is fake, but that moral certainty is not self-authenticating. The broader context is his case for a stable sovereign authority: if private conscience can be mistaken, then public order can’t be built on competing private revelations. The modern sting is obvious: righteous certainty isn’t evidence; it’s a liability that needs checks, institutions, and humility.