"The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life"
About this Quote
The subtext is a brutal audit of human motivation. Strip away churches and courts and you don’t find a spontaneous community; you find individuals with bodies to protect and appetites to satisfy, each authorized by nature to do what it takes. Hobbes’s phrasing doesn’t romanticize this; it legalizes it. He makes self-preservation the original title deed, which means conflict isn’t a tragic accident of history. It’s the default setting.
Context matters: Hobbes is writing in the shadow of civil war, watching a society claim competing "rights" in God’s name and tear itself apart. His move is to redefine rights in a way that makes them pre-political, even anti-political: before laws, you have powers; before justice, you have fear.
That’s why the line works rhetorically. It sounds like a clean definition, almost clinical, but it’s laying track for Leviathan: if everyone is naturally free to do whatever preserves them, then peace requires a new invention - authority strong enough to rewire liberty into obedience.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|---|
| Source | Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), Ch. 14 "Of the First and Second Natural Laws, and of Contracts" — definition: "the right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power... for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life". |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Hobbes, Thomas. (2026, January 15). The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-right-of-nature-is-the-liberty-each-man-hath-34658/
Chicago Style
Hobbes, Thomas. "The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-right-of-nature-is-the-liberty-each-man-hath-34658/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-right-of-nature-is-the-liberty-each-man-hath-34658/. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
