David Hume Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by David Hume
David Hume Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from David Hume on Wise Famous Quotes.
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.
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.
Avarice, or the desire of gain, is a universal passion which operates at all times, at all places, and upon all persons.
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.
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.
No conclusion can be more agreable to scepticism than such as make discoveries concerning the weakness and narrow limites of human reason and capacity
The simplest and most obvious cause which can there be assigned for any phenomena, is probably the true one.
Fine writing, according to Mr. Addison, consists of sentiments which are natural without being obvious.
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.
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.
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.
the Good and the Bad.
But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.
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.
Habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the knowledge, and still less to the understanding, of lawful relations.
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.
This question depends upon the definition of the word, Nature, than which there is none more ambiguous and equivocal.
The supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit.
It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have preference above the accurate.
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 great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of scepticism is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life.
From causes which appear similar, we expect similar effects. This is the sum total of all our experimental conclusions.
Grief and disappointment give rise to anger, anger to envy, envy to malice, and malice to grief again, till the whole circle be completed.