David Hume Quotes

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

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

To be a philosophical Sceptic is the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian.

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

Explanation is where the mind rests.

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

Nothing is pure and entire of a piece. All advantages are attended with disadvantages. A universal compensation prevails in all conditions of being and existence.

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

Men often act knowingly against their interest.

It is impossible for us to think of any thing, which we have not antecedently felt, either by our external or internal senses.

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.

Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence.

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.

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

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

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

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.

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

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

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

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.

The most perfect happiness, surely, must arise from the contemplation of the most perfect object.

Liberty of any kind is never lost all at once.

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

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

He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper but he is more excellent who suits his temper to any circumstances.

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.