David Hume Quotes

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

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

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

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

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

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

All knowledge degenerates into probability.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Custom is the great guide to human life.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.

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.

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.

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.

Everything in the world is purchased by labor.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.