David Hume famous quotes

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.
-- David Hume

#Positive #Beauty #Philosophical

It is seldom, that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom, that it must steal upon them by degrees, and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes, in order to be received.
-- David Hume

#Men #Order #Liberty

Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man.
-- David Hume

#Philosophy #Philosophical #Science

Custom is the great guide to human life.
-- David Hume

#Guides #Human Life #Humans

A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow real poverty.
-- David Hume

#Real #Joy #Sorrow

Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.
-- David Hume

#Philosophical #Passion #Eye

A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.
-- David Hume

#Men #World #May

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
-- David Hume

#Wise #Wisdom #Knowledge

When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities.
-- David Hume

#Passion #Humility #Men

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.
-- David Hume

#Philosophical #Easiness #Surprising

Which is more likely: that the whole natural order is suspended, or that a jewish minx should tell a lie?
-- David Hume

#Lying #Order #Natural

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.
-- David Hume

#Philosophy #Passion #Slave

It's when we start working together that the real healing takes place... it's when we start spilling our sweat, and not our blood.
-- David Hume

#Real #Healing #Sweat

Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding.
-- David Hume

#Reflection #Understanding #Desire

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.
-- David Hume

#Religious #Reality #Miracle

Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.
-- David Hume

#Men #Two #Heaven

Any pride or haughtiness, is displeasing to us, merely because it shocks our own pride, and leads us by sympathy into comparison, which causes the disagreeable passion of humility.
-- David Hume

#Passion #Humility #Pride

The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.
-- David Hume

#Christian #Religious #Miracle

Reading and sauntering and lounging and dosing, which I call thinking, is my supreme Happiness.
-- David Hume

#Reading #Journey #Thinking

The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.
-- David Hume

#Philosophical #Giving #Corruption

The law always limits every power it gives.
-- David Hume

#Philosophical #Power #Law

Where ambition can cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of passions
-- David Hume

#Passion #Ambition #Principles

The religious hypothesis, therefore, must be considered only as a particular method of accounting for the visible phenomena of the universe: but no just reasoner will ever presume to infer from it any single fact, and alter or add to the phenomena, in any single particular.
-- David Hume

#Religious #Atheism #Add

But to proceed in this reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity; the most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science...
-- David Hume

#Liberty #Free Will #Projects

This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society.
-- David Hume

#Possession #Goods #Insatiable

Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.
-- David Hume

#Strong #Philosophy #Philosophical

The sweetest path of life leads through the avenues of learning, and whoever can open up the way for another, ought, so far, to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind.
-- David Hume

#Learning #Way #Path

Everything in the world is purchased by labor.
-- David Hume

#Philosophical #World #Labor

Art may make a suite of clothes, but nature must produce a man.
-- David Hume

#Art #Nature #Men

He is happy whom circumstances suit his temper; but he Is more excellent who suits his temper to any circumstance.
-- David Hume

#Happiness #Suits #Excellent

To have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being, in order to prove the veracity of our senses, is surely making a very unexpected circuit.
-- David Hume

#Order #Atheism #Unexpected

And what is the greatest number? Number one.
-- David Hume

#Philosophical #Numbers

A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.
-- David Hume

#Stupid #Philosophical #Design

The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.
-- David Hume

#Life #Science #Men

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.
-- David Hume

#Friendship #Spring #Philosophical

Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude.
-- David Hume

#Truth #Honesty #Stronger

The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness
-- David Hume

#Ends #Attainment #Humans

Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.
-- David Hume

#Philosophical #Character #Results

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.
-- David Hume

#Peace #War #Philosophical

And though the philosopher may live remote from business, the genius of philosophy, if carefully cultivated by several, must gradually diffuse itself throughout the whole society, and bestow a similar correctness on every art and calling.
-- David Hume

#Art #Philosophy #Political

The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation.
-- David Hume

#Lazy #Lively #Stills

No man ever threw away life while it was worth keeping.
-- David Hume

#Optimistic #Men

What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call 'thought'.
-- David Hume

#Philosophical #Brain #Privilege

To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive.
-- David Hume

#Hate #Philosophical #Thinking

Men often act knowingly against their interest.
-- David Hume

#Philosophical #Men #Interest

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
-- David Hume

#Philosophy #Passion #Office

..when, in my philosophical disquisitions, I deny a providence and a future state, I undermine not the foundations of society, but advance principles, which they themselves, upon their own topics, if they argue consistently, must allow to be solid and satisfactory.
-- David Hume

#Philosophical #Atheism #Foundation

The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds.
-- David Hume

#Weed #Genius #Soil

In this sullen apathy neither true wisdom nor true happiness can be found.
-- David Hume

#Empathy #Apathy #Sullen

Your corn is ripe today, mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profitable for us both that I should labor with you today, and that you should aid me tomorrow. I have no kindness for you, and know you have as little for me. I will not, therefore, take any pains upon your account . . . Here then I leave you to labor alone; you treat me in the same manner. The seasons change, and both of us lose our harvests for want of mutual confidence and security.
-- David Hume

#Pain #Kindness #Volunteer

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.
-- David Hume

#Beauty #Mind #Quality

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.
-- David Hume

#Philosophy #Philosophical #Science

No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.
-- David Hume

#Swans #White #Black

Liberty of any kind is never lost all at once.
-- David Hume

#Liberty #Kind #Lost

That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise.
-- David Hume

#Sun #Selfless #Tomorrow

It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have preference above the accurate.
-- David Hume

#Philosophy #Easy #Preference

Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers.
-- David Hume

#Mistake #Imagination #Philosopher

A too great disproportion among the citizens weakens any state. Every person, if possible, ought to enjoy the fruits of his labour, in a full possession of all the necessities, and many of the conveniences of life. No one can doubt, but such an equality is most suitable to human nature, and diminishes much less from the happiness of the rich than it adds to that of the poor.
-- David Hume

#Political #Doubt #Fruit

It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations, that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations; or if a civilized people has ever given admission to any of them, that people will be found to have received them from ignorant and barbarous ancestors.
-- David Hume

#Strong #People #Ignorant

Among the arts of conversation no one pleases more than mutual deference or civility, which leads us to resign our own inclinations to those of our companions, and to curb and conceal that presumption and arrogance so natural to the human mind.
-- David Hume

#Art #Arrogance #Mind

When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?
-- David Hume

#World #Eternity #Circumstances

When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.
-- David Hume

#Men #Stupidity #Arrogant

Every disastrous accident alarms us, and sets us on enquiries concerning the principles whence it arose: Apprehensions spring up with regard to futurity: And the mind, sunk into diffidence, terror, and melancholy, has recourse to every method of appeasing those secret intelligent powers, on whom our fortune is supposed entirely to depend.
-- David Hume

#Spring #Intelligent #Secret

I shall venture to affirm, that there never was a popular religion, which represented the state of departed souls in such a light,as would render it eligible for human kind, that there should be such a state. These fine models of religion are the mere product of philosophy. For as death lies between the eye and the prospect of futurity, that event is so shocking to nature, that it must throw a gloom on all the regions which lie beyond it; and suggest to the generality of mankind the idea of Cerberus and Furies; devils, and torrents of fire and brimstone.
-- David Hume

#Death #Philosophy #Lying