Top 385 Quotes & Sayings by David Hume
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Scottish philosopher David Hume.
Last updated on December 23, 2024.
It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.
What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call 'thought'.
Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.
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.
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.
The chief benefit, which results from philosophy, arises in an indirect manner, and proceeds more from its secret, insensible influence, than from its immediate application.
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 advantages in this world are pure and unmixed.
Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.
Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.
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.
Truth springs from argument amongst friends.
Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence.
Accuracy is, in every case, advantageous to beauty, and just reasoning to delicate sentiment. In vain would we exalt the one by depreciating the other.
A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow real poverty.
Men often act knowingly against their interest.
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.
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.
Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.
The law always limits every power it gives.
Every wise, just, and mild government, by rendering the condition of its subjects easy and secure, will always abound most in people, as well as in commodities and riches.
Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.
The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.
Everything in the world is purchased by labor.
The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.
Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.
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.
The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.
A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.
This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society.
Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.
Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived.
It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.
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.
Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man.
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.
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.
To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential to being a sound, believing Christian.
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.
Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.
Custom is the great guide to human life.
He is happy whom circumstances suit his temper; but he Is more excellent who suits his temper to any circumstance.
And what is the greatest number? Number one.
To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive.
It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.
It is a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.
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.
Avarice, the spur of industry.
There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.
There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.
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.
Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.
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.
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.
When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.
All knowledge degenerates into probability.
Anything that is conceivable is possible.
I do not have enough faith to believe there is no god.
There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse.
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