David Hume Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about David Hume

David Hume Quotes & Sayings

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When we reflect on the shortness and uncertainty of life, how despicable seem all our pursuits of happiness. — David Hume

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

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

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

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

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

God can intervene in the universe he created despite what David Hume says. — Norman L. Geisler

Reason is just a means to an end, and the end depends on the reasoner's passions. — Steven Pinker

The most pernicious of all taxes are the arbitrary. — David Hume

I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. — David Hume

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

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. — David Hume

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

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

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

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. — David Hume

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

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

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

Superstition is an enemy to civil liberty. — David Hume

Jealousy is a painful passion; yet without some share of it, the agreeable affection of love has difficulty to subsist in its full force and violence. — David Hume

Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains. — David Hume

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason. — David Hume

Absolute monarchy, ... is the easiest death, the true Euthanasia of the BRITISH constitution. — David Hume

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

Beauty in things exists in the mind that contemplates them. — David Hume

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

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

The first ideas of religion arose, not from contemplation of the works of nature, but from a concern with regard to the events of life. — David Hume

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

While we are reasoning concerning life, life is gone. — David Hume

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

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

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

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

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

In a vain man, the smallest spark may kindle into the greatest flame, because the materials are always prepared for it. — David Hume

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

Explanation is where the mind rests. — David Hume

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

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

If ... the past may be no Rule for the future, all Experience becomes useless and can give rise to no Inferences or Conclusions. — David Hume

Avarice, the spur of industry. — David Hume

What praise is implied in the simple epithet useful! What reproach in the contrary. — David Hume

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

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

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

The truth springs from arguments amongst friends. — David Hume

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

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

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

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

Delicacy of taste has the same effect as delicacy of passion; it enlarges the sphere both of our happiness and our misery. — David Hume

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

No advantages in this world are pure and unmixed. — David Hume

When any opinion leads us into absurdities, 'tis certainly false; but 'tis not certain an opinion is false, because 'tis of dangerous consequence. — David Hume

In every page of David Hume, there is more to be learned than from Hegel's, Herbart's and Schleiermacher's complete philosophical works. — Arthur Schopenhauer

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

Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity. — David Hume

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

A man posing for a painting. — David Hume

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

Truth springs from argument amongst friends. — David Hume

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

Time is a perishable commodity. — David Hume

Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived. — David Hume

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

Rousseau was mad but influential; Hume was sane but had no followers. — David Hume

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even David Hume, one of history most famous skeptics, said it's just barely possible that God exists. — Peter Kreeft

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

Virtue, like wholesome food, is better than poisons, however corrected. — David Hume

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

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

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

The Crusades - the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation. — David Hume

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — David Hume

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them — David Hume

The unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to be so. — David Hume

Interest is the barometer of the state ... — David Hume

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

[Rousseau is] the person whom I most revere both for the Force of [his] Genius and the Greatness of [his] mind [ ... ] — David Hume

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

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

A little philosophy makes a man an Atheist: a great deal converts him to religion — David Hume

A wise man apportions his beliefs to the evidence. — David Hume