Top 100 Hume Quotes
#1. Nothing more powerfully excites any affection than to conceal some part of its object, by throwing it into a kind of shade, whichat the same time that it shows enough to prepossess us in favour of the object, leaves still some work for the imagination.
David Hume
#2. Eloquence, when in its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection.
David Hume
#3. Insure the uninsured. Effect of Obamacare to date: Uninsure the insured,
Brit Hume
#4. The basic policy of the British Government was that since the majority of people in Northern Ireland wished to remain in the United Kingdom, that was that. We asked what would happen if the majority wanted something else, if the majority wanted to see Irish unity.
John Hume
#5. Mohammed praises [instances of] tretchery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, and bigotry that are utterly incompatible with civilized society.
David Hume
#6. 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
#7. The mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an enquiry or discourse concerning the others: and if we think ofa wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it.
David Hume
#8. I don't vote. I voted Labour once, in that moment of euphoria. I know that if people only made a voice for change, then change will happen, but I'm not that person. I'm painting pictures.
Gary Hume
#9. If the contemplation, even of inanimate beauty, is so delightful; if it ravishes the senses, even when the fair form is foreign tous: What must be the effects of moral beauty? And what influence must it have, when it embellishes our own mind, and is the result of our own reflection and industry?
David Hume
#11. You know, the market was down yesterday ... my first thought when I heard-just on a personal basis, when I heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought, Time to buy.
Brit Hume
#12. What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call 'thought'.
David Hume
#13. It seems to me, that the only Objects of the abstract Sciences or of Demonstration is Quantity and Number, and that all Attempts to extend this more perfect Species of Knowledge beyond these Bounds are mere Sophistry and Illusion.
David Hume
#14. There is abundant proof that the opening of our ports always tends to raise the price of foreign corn to the price in the English market, and not to sink the price of British corn to the price in the continental market.
Joseph Hume
#15. When people are divided, the only solution is agreement.
John Hume
#16. I love to see a wood full of bluebells. Growing up in the Kent countryside, I have special memories of this brief annual spectacle.
Gary Hume
#17. Nothing is more favorable to the rise of politeness and learning, than a number of neighboring and independent states, connected together by commerce and policy.
David Hume
#18. Nothing exists without a cause, the original cause of this universe we call God.
David Hume
#19. The sun will rise tomorrow morning; I know that perfectly well. But figuring out how I could know it is, as Hume pointed out, a bit of a puzzle.
Jerry A. Fodor
#20. The only thing I shall talk about is my sporting achievements at school. My primary sporting achievement at school was that I dodged games for two complete years and was well through the third year before they discovered that I had completely avoided all games.
John Hume
#21. I'm more and more fascinated in my own work. I work from 10 A.M. until about 9 P.M., but it's not an obsession, it's a pleasure. There's never enough time.
Gary Hume
#22. I'd rather be remembered as a famous painter than a famous model, so I'll have to start the ball rolling now.
Kirsty Hume
#23. But to proceed in this reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity; the most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science ...
David Hume
#24. I like things that are just about to go. Everything's leaving. Death is never far away from me. When you make something, death can't help but be in it.
Gary Hume
#25. The basis of peace and stability, in any society, has to be the fullest respect for the human rights of all its people.
John Hume
#26. Beyond the constant conjunction of similar objects, and the consequent inference from one to the other, we have no notion of any necessity, or connexion.
David Hume
#27. [priests are] the pretenders to power and dominion, and to a superior sanctity of character, distinct from virtue and good morals.
David Hume
#28. It is more rational to suspect knavery and folly than to discount, at a stroke, everything that past experience has taught me about the way things actually work
David Hume
#29. Soon after you're dead - we're not sure how long - but not long, you'll be united with the most ecstatic love you've ever known. As one of the best things in your life was human love, this will be love, but much more satisfying, and it will last forever.
Basil Hume
#30. Therefore they should come to the table and reach an agreement that would protect their identity.
John Hume
#31. I was grateful for the opportunity to make a difference. The political violence really started in 1970-1971. The political difficulties start a little bit beyond that.
John Hume
#32. I do not have enough faith to believe there is no god.
David Hume
#33. Morals and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment.
David Hume
#34. When Friedrich Nietzsche mocked Immanuel Kant for having "discovered a moral faculty in man", he inadvertently resolved Kant's dilemma of being unable to identify what exactly constituted his "moral law" for fear of offending against a charge of empiricism from the likes of David Hume.
Joseph B.H. McMillan
#35. Raki is bad enough, but it's nectar compared with pulque.
Fergus Hume
#36. Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.
David Hume
#37. The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds.
David Hume
#38. Municipal laws are a supply to the wisdom of each individual; and, at the same time, by restraining the natural liberty of men, make private interest submit to the interest of the public.
David Hume
#39. Judgments. A mistake, therefore, of right may become a species
David Hume
#40. I am willing to admit that if the agriculturists are oppressed by peculiar burdens, they ought to be relieved from them, or be allowed a fair and just protection equivalent to all such peculiar burdens.
Joseph Hume
#41. I don't think very many people would accuse Paula Zahn of being a conservative.
Brit Hume
#42. This question depends upon the definition of the word, Nature, than which there is none more ambiguous and equivocal.
David Hume
#43. Nobody's profitable at this moment, because recession is on; advertising dollars are down, and expenses are way up. So that kind of belies the situation that you would expect, because the ratings are way up everywhere.
Brit Hume
#44. When you're five years old, and you're running a business that people did not think there was room for, getting attention is not a bad thing. Letting it be known by whatever colorful language is necessary is not a bad thing.
Brit Hume
#45. Hume develops his arguments by a series of models. He doesn't call them models in the pretentious way in which we envelope, very often, pure banalities in this jargon
Lionel Robbins, Baron Robbins
#46. 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.
David Hume
#47. From causes which appear similar, we expect similar effects. This is the sum total of all our experimental conclusions.
David Hume
#48. The sweetest and most inoffensive path of life leads through the avenues of science and learning; and whoever can either remove any obstructions in this way, or open up any new prospect, ought so far to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind.
David Hume
#49. Hume believed that reason was (and was only fit to be) the servant of the passions.
Jonathan Haidt
#50. Even David Hume, one of history most famous skeptics, said it's just barely possible that God exists.
Peter Kreeft
#52. I see no reason for giving the capital employed in agriculture greater protection than the capital vested in other branches of trade, manufacture, or commerce.
Joseph Hume
#53. Habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the knowledge, and still less to the understanding, of lawful relations.
David Hume
#54. There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse.
David Hume
#55. The law always limits every power it gives.
David Hume
#56. All inferences from experience ... are effects of custom, not of reasoning.
David Hume
#57. The Doors are perfect paintings; a relief from the picture world I've created for myself.
Gary Hume
#58. Live your dreams, not your fears! A.Hume
Albina Hume
#59. Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.
David Hume
#60. 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.
David Hume
#61. 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
#62. Democrats all claim they'll get rough with the terrorists, but they can't even face Brit Hume.
Ann Coulter
#63. But I would still reply, that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena, that I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence, than admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature
David Hume
#64. It cannot reasonably be doubted, but a little miss, dressed in a new gown for a dancing-school ball, receives as complete enjoyment as the greatest orator, who triumphs in the splendour of his eloquence, while he governs the passions and resolutions of a numerous assembly.
David Hume
#65. These ideas are, perhaps, too far stretched; but still it must be acknowledged, that, by representing the Deity as so intelligible and comprehensible, and so similar to a human mind, we are guilty of the grossest and most narrow partiality, and make ourselves the model of the whole universe.
David Hume
#66. Carelessness and in-attention alone can afford us any remedy. For this reason I rely entirely upon them.
David Hume
#67. The essential passions of the heart have found a better soil in which it may attain it's maturity; remain under less restraint and extended into it's natural state
David Hume
#68. Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.
David Hume
#69. I fill my life with a lot of 'busyness' in between jobs. Then I work very hard. Some of it is quite unhealthy. It's compulsive. I don't know what to do about it. I'm a little old to change.
Hume Cronyn
#70. (On belief in miracles) - The gazing populace receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder.
David Hume
#71. I never thought in terms of being a leader. I thought very simply in terms of helping people.
John Hume
#72. 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
#73. 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.
David Hume
#74. There is nothing, in itself, valuable or despicable, desirable or hateful, beautiful or deformed; but that these attributes arise from the particular constitution and fabric of human sentiment and affection.
David Hume
#75. Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries.
David Hume
#76. David Hume, who wrote in 1739 that "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.
Jonathan Haidt
#77. Hear the verbal protestations of all men: Nothing so certain as their religious tenets. Examine their lives: You will scarcely think that they repose the smallest confidence in them.
David Hume
#78. At the present moment the people of England are only three-quarters fed, and the result of this improvement in the export of our manufactures would be, that they would be entirely fed.
Joseph Hume
#79. I have to go with what the painting says to me. The painting is always informing me. I'm its servant; it's not mine. I'm doing what it wants.
Gary Hume
#80. I freely admit that the remembrance of David Hume was the very thing that many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave a completely different direction to my researches in the field of speculative philosophy.
Immanuel Kant
#81. It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity.
David Hume
#82. [A] planet, wholly inhabited by spiders, (which is very possible)
David Hume
#83. 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.
David Hume
#85. [Rousseau] has not had the precaution to throw any veil over his sentiments; and as he scorns to dissemble his contempt of established opinions, he could not wonder that all the zealots were in arms against him.
David Hume
#86. A wise man apportions his beliefs to the evidence.
David Hume
#87. Nothing can be more real, or concern us more, than our own sentiments of pleasure and uneasiness; and if these be favourable to virtue and unfavourable to vice, no more can be requisite to the regulation of our conduct and behavior.
David Hume
#88. Tristram Shandy may perhaps go on a little longer, but we will not follow him. With all his drollery there is a sameness of extravagance which tires us. We have just a succession of Surprise, surprise, surprise.
David Hume
#89. It's perfectly possible for somebody to make the transition from politics to journalism.
Brit Hume
#90. The more tremendous the divinity is represented, the more tame and submissive do men become his ministers: And the more unaccountable the measures of acceptance required by him, the more necessary does it become to abandon our natural reason, and yield to their ghostly guidance and direction.
David Hume
#91. 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.
David Hume
#92. The sceptics assert, though absurdly, that the origin of all religious worship was derived from the utility of inanimate objects,as the sun and moon, to the support and well-being of mankind.
David Hume
#93. It is, therefore, a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.
David Hume
#94. It's not part of my ambition to become fabulously rich. My plan was always to make my pictures, and hopefully people would buy them, and then I'd buy a studio, buy a house, help friends out, do bits and bobs - but I've no idea after that.
Gary Hume
#95. Anything that is conceivable is possible.
David Hume
#96. It is, and long has been my opinion, and I have heard honourable members in this House declare it to be theirs - that it is the duty of Parliament equally to protect all the different interests in the country.
Joseph Hume
#97. Superstition is an enemy to civil liberty.
David Hume
#98. Fox News has learned some United States investigators believe that there are Israelis again very much engaged in spying in and on the United States, who may have known things they didn't tell us before September 11, 2001.
Brit Hume
#99. 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
#100. I never asserted such an absurd thing as that things arise without a cause.
David Hume
