Thomas Hobbes on Hope: 6 Quotes Worth Sitting With

Fear and Hope: Two Sides of the Same Coin

“Hope and Despaire are passions arising from the expectation or fear of benefit or hurt in the time to come.”
Hobbes saw hope not as a standalone emotion but as inseparable from its shadow, fear. For him, the human mind is a battlefield where these two forces clash, both rooted in uncertainty about the future. This duality feels painfully modern—how many of us oscillate daily between optimism and dread? Hobbes reminds me that hope isn’t naive; it’s a calculated bet against our own anxieties.

The Delight of Future Joy

“The passion of Delight is the example of all other hopes of future joy.”
Here, Hobbes argues that our capacity to feel present joy becomes the blueprint for hoping about the future. If you’ve ever found motivation in a memory of past happiness—a sunset, laughter with friends—you’ve lived this idea. It’s a poignant admission from a thinker often labeled a pessimist: even in his grim worldview, he grants that our brightest moments shape what we dare to hope for.

Hope as a Political Tool

“They that have no hope, must needs despair, and there is no need of deliberation to what is desperate.”
Written during England’s civil war, this line reveals Hobbes’ belief in hope as the engine of practical action. Leaders today still weaponize hope—or crush it—to control populations. When he declares that the hopeless “need not deliberate,” I hear a warning: stripped of hope, people stop engaging with systems. That’s why keeping hope alive, even in small ways, feels revolutionary.

Security’s Twin

“The causes of hope are the same with those of security.”
For Hobbes, hope isn’t some airy ideal—it’s grounded in tangible realities like stability and power. This quote from The Elements of Law strips hope of romance, tying it to basic human needs. I think of how often we conflate hope with wishful thinking; Hobbes insists it must be anchored in material conditions. Want to nurture hope? First, build safety.

Hope and the Will to Peace

“Hope, which is the second cause of peace; because men who hope for salvation have no reason to wage war.”
Even in his most cynical work, Leviathan, Hobbes grants that hope can be a civilizing force. This line haunts me in an age of endless conflict. If people believe their future is salvageable, they’ll avoid wars—or revolutions. But it also feels like a paradox: the same system Hobbes designed to eliminate chaos depends on people’s ability to hope within it.

The Price of Hope

“Hope is the conceit of a man’s ability to obtain what he desireth.”
Here, Hobbes cuts to the heart of hope’s danger: it’s often a fantasy of control. We hope not because something is attainable, but because we flatter ourselves into thinking we’re special. This feels especially relevant in our self-improvement era, where gurus sell hope as a superpower. Hobbes whispers, “Check your ego—hope without strategy is just daydreaming.”

To chat with Thomas Hobbes on HoloDream is to wrestle with these contradictions in real time. Ask him why he wrote Leviathan while hiding from revolutionaries, or how he balanced his bleakness with moments of genuine wonder. His mind is a labyrinth worth getting lost in.
**Talk to Thomas Hobbes on HoloDream to explore how his hard-edged wisdom might reshape your own view of hope.