David Hume quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by David Hume

David Hume Famous Quotes & Sayings

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The ages of greatest public spirit are not always eminent for private virtue.

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

The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue.

I cannot but bless the memory of Julius Caesar, for the great esteem he expressed for fat men and his aversion to lean ones.

It is a certain rule that wit and passion are entirely incompatible. When the affections are moved, there is no place for the imagination.

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

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

Apart from the representational content of an idea there is another component: its force and vivacity, its impetus.

Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.

The bigotry of theologians [is] a malady which seems almost incurable.

That the sun shines tomorrow is a judgement that is as true as the contrary judgement.

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

Anything that is conceivable is possible.

All inferences from experience ... are effects of custom, not of reasoning.

Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.

It is still open for me, as well as you, to regulate my behavior, by my experience of past events.

Avarice, or the desire of gain, is a universal passion which operates at all times, at all places, and upon all persons.

Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.

It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.

I never asserted such an absurd thing as that things arise without a cause.

[A] planet, wholly inhabited by spiders, (which is very possible)

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

Belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain.

When I hear that a man is religious, I conclude he is a rascal!

Avarice, the spur of industry.

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.

Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.

No conclusion can be more agreable to scepticism than such as make discoveries concerning the weakness and narrow limites of human reason and capacity

Morals and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment.

The simplest and most obvious cause which can there be assigned for any phenomena, is probably the true one.

Luxury is a word of uncertain signification, and may be taken in a good as in a bad sense

Fine writing, according to Mr. Addison, consists of sentiments which are natural without being obvious.

In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies of liberty.

The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness

I have written on all sorts of subjects ... yet I have no enemies; except indeed all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.

Carelessness and in-attention alone can afford us any remedy. For this reason I rely entirely upon them.

It is an absurdity to believe that the Deity has human passions, and one of the lowest of human passions, a restless appetite for applause

But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country.

(On belief in miracles) - The gazing populace receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder.

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

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

It's seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.

Self-denial is a monkish virtue.

Praise never gives us much pleasure unless it concur with our own opinion, and extol us for those qualities in which we chiefly excel.

Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press.

[priests are] the pretenders to power and dominion, and to a superior sanctity of character, distinct from virtue and good morals.

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

Mohammed praises [instances of] tretchery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, and bigotry that are utterly incompatible with civilized society.

What would become of history, had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian, according to the experience, what we have had of mankind?

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.

All power, even the most despotic, rests ultimately on opinion.

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.

[R]evolutions of government cannot be effected by the mere force of argument and reasoning;

Time is a perishable commodity.

It is possible for the same thing both to be and not to be.

And what is the greatest number? Number one.

Habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the knowledge, and still less to the understanding, of lawful relations.

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

God is an ever-present spirit guiding all that happens to a wise and holy end.

I do not have enough faith to believe there is no god.

Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds on which it is commonly founded.

Interest is the barometer of the state ...

This question depends upon the definition of the word, Nature, than which there is none more ambiguous and equivocal.

There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse.

A wise man apportions his beliefs to the evidence.

The supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit.

No advantages in this world are pure and unmixed.

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

A man posing for a painting.

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

Of all sciences there is none where first appearances are more deceitful than in politics.

Mankind are always found prodigal both of blood and treasure in the maintenance of public justice.

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

Everything in the world is purchased by labor.

The victory is not gained by the men at arms, who manage the pike and the sword; but by the trumpeters,

Thomas Hobbes's politics are fitted only to promote tyranny, and his ethics to encourage licentiousness.

That a rule, which, in speculation, may seem the most advantageous to society, may yet be found, in practice, totally pernicious and destructive.

The identity that we ascribe to things is only a fictitious one, established by the mind, not a peculiar nature belonging to what we're talking about.

Tis not unreasonable for me to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.

Poets themselves, tho' liars by profession, always endeavour to give an air of truth to their fictions ...

He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper, but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to his circumstance.

[A person's] utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value.

To philosopher and historian the madness and imbecile wickedness of mankind ought to appear ordinary events.

The truth springs from arguments amongst friends.

Uncommon expressions are a disfigurement rather than an embellishment of discourse.

The great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of scepticism is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life.

Eloquence, when in its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection.

From causes which appear similar, we expect similar effects. This is the sum total of all our experimental conclusions.

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

Judgments. A mistake, therefore, of right may become a species

There is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books.

It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity.

The most pernicious of all taxes are the arbitrary.

Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains.

Grief and disappointment give rise to anger, anger to envy, envy to malice, and malice to grief again, till the whole circle be completed.

Obtruded on us by the Scottish historians. [* Chron. Sax. p. 19.] [** W. Malms, p. 19.]

The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.

The Roman Catholic Index of Prohibited Books, a list that came to include almost every significant work of post-medieval Western philosophy.

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

Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.