David hume quotes

Truth is disputable, not human taste.

Time is a perishable commodity.

Anything that is conceivable is possible.

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.

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

Avarice, the spur of industry.

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.

Liberty of any kind is never lost all at once.

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

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

All this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us the by senses and experience.

The difference between a man who is led by opinion or emotion and one who is led by reason. The former, whether he will or not, performs things of which he is entirely ignorant; the latter is subordinate to no one, and only does those things which he knows to be of primary importance in his life, and which on that account he desires the most; and therefore I call the former a slave, but the latter free.

Examine the religious principles which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded that they are other than sick men's dreams.

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

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.

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

Everything in the world is purchased by labor.

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

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

When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. All the world conspires to oppose and contradict me; though such is my weakness, that I feel all my opinions loosen and fall of themselves, when unsupported by the approbation of others.

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.

No human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion

Anticipation of pleasure is, in itself, a very considerable pleasure.

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

Superstition is an enemy to civil liberty.

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

No truth appears to me more evident than that beasts are endowed with thought and reason as well as men.

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

And what is the greatest number? Number one.

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

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

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.

It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause.

All knowledge degenerates into probability.

When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.

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

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

History is the discovering of the principles of human nature.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients: action, pleasure and indolence.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

... The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise and good Being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

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

When I shall be dead, the principles of which I am composed will still perform their part in the universe, and will be equally useful in the grand fabric, as when they composed this individual creature. The difference to the whole will be no greater betwixt my being in a chamber and in the open air. The one change is of more importance to me than the other; but not more so to the universe.

The imagination of man is naturally sublime, delighted with whatever is remote and extraordinary, and running, without control, into the most distant parts of space and time in order to avoid the objects, which custom has rendered too familiar to it.

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.

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.

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

Of all the animals with which this globe is peopled, there is none towards whom nature seems, at first sight, to have exercised more cruelty than towards man, in the numberless wants and necessities with which she has loaded him, and in the slender means which she affords to the relieving these necessities.

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

The fact that different cultures have different practices no more refutes [moral] objectivism than the fact that water flows in different directions in different places refutes the law of gravity

.. the voice of nature and experience seems plainly to oppose the selfish theory.

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

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

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

The minds of men are mirrors to one another, not only because they reflect each other's emotions, but also because those rays of passions, sentiments and opinions may be often reverberated, and may decay away by insensible degrees.

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

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.

I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilization of their complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or speculation.

Nothing exists without a cause, the original cause of this universe we call God.

We learn the influence of our will from experience alone. And experience only teaches us, how one event constantly follows another; without instructing us in the secret connexion, which binds them together, and renders them inseparable.

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.

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

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.

Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains.

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

Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, inpregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children.

The heart of man is made to reconcile the most glaring contradictions.

What we call a mind is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity and identity.

Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature.

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

Moving from an objective statement of fact to a subjective statement of value does not work, because it leaves open questions that have not been answered.

Custom is the great guide to human life.

The consequence of a very free commerce between the sexes, and of their living much together, will often terminate in intrigues and gallantry.

.. that which renders morality an active principle and constitutes virtue our happiness, and vice our misery: it is probable, I say, that this final sentence depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species.

The mind is a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make their appearence; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.

Heroism, or military glory, is much admired by the generality of mankind. They consider it as the most sublime kind of merit. Menof cool reflection are not so sanguine in their praises of it.

While we are reasoning concerning life, life is gone.

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

No quality of human nature is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however different from, or even contrary to our own.

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

The most pernicious of all taxes are the arbitrary.

It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the under-workman, and is employed to give a few strokes of embellishment to those pieces, which come from the hand of the master.

Self-denial is a monkish virtue.

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

Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.

Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.

But, historians, and even common sense, may inform us, that, however specious these ideas of perfect equality may seem, they are really, at bottom, impracticable; and were they not so, would be extremely pernicious to human society. Render possessions ever so equal, men's different degrees of art, care, and industry will immediately break that equality. Or if you check these virtues, you reduce society to the most extreme indigence; and instead of preventing want and beggary in a few, render it unavoidable to the whole community.

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.

Justice is a moral virtue, merely because it has that tendency to the good of mankind, and indeed is nothing but an artificial invention to that purpose. The same may be said of allegiance, of the laws of nations, of modesty, and of good manners. All these are mere human contrivances for the interest of society.

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.

The gazing populace receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder.

If God is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good, whence evil? If God wills to prevent evil but cannot, then He is not omnipotent. If He can prevent evil but does not, then he is not good. In either case he is not God.

Men often act knowingly against their interest.

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

The greater part of mankind may be divided into two classes; that of shallow thinkers who fall short of the truth; and that of abstruse thinkers who go beyond it.

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.

Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are the true sources of superstition. Hope, pride, presumption, a warm indignation, together with ignorance, are the true sources of enthusiasm.