Top 100 Quotes About David Hume
#1. 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
#2. Even David Hume, one of history most famous skeptics, said it's just barely possible that God exists.
Peter Kreeft
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. I have always considered David Hume as approaching as nearly the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will allow.
Adam Smith
#6. [On David Hume]
Although he never admitted to being an atheist as such, he was clearly and unquestionably the most vividly elegant skeptic of them all.
Jonathan Miller
#7. In every page of David Hume, there is more to be learned than from Hegel's, Herbart's and Schleiermacher's complete philosophical works.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#8. A philosophy professor at my college, whose baby became enamored of the portrait of David Hume on a Penguin paperback, had the cover laminated in plastic so her daughter could cut her teeth on the great thinker.
Anne Fadiman
#9. The first-cause and prime-mover argument, brilliantly proffered by St. Thomas Aquinas in the fourteenth century (and brilliantly refuted by David Hume in the eighteenth century), is easily turned aside with just one more question: Who or what caused and moved God?
Michael Shermer
#10. God can intervene in the universe he created despite what David Hume says.
Norman L. Geisler
#11. Poor David Hume is dying fast, but with more real cheerfulness and good humor and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.
Adam Smith
#12. I think it was David Hume who put it slightly vulgarly, this was again about the virgin birth I think. Which is more likely ... that the whole natural order is suspended or that a Jewish minx should tell a lie?
Christopher Hitchens
#13. 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
#14. Eloquence, when in its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection.
David Hume
#15. Mohammed praises [instances of] tretchery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, and bigotry that are utterly incompatible with civilized society.
David Hume
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call 'thought'.
David Hume
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. Nothing exists without a cause, the original cause of this universe we call God.
David 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. 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
#25. [priests are] the pretenders to power and dominion, and to a superior sanctity of character, distinct from virtue and good morals.
David Hume
#26. 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
#27. I do not have enough faith to believe there is no god.
David Hume
#28. Morals and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment.
David Hume
#29. Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.
David Hume
#30. The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds.
David Hume
#31. 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
#32. Judgments. A mistake, therefore, of right may become a species
David Hume
#33. This question depends upon the definition of the word, Nature, than which there is none more ambiguous and equivocal.
David Hume
#34. 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
#35. From causes which appear similar, we expect similar effects. This is the sum total of all our experimental conclusions.
David Hume
#36. 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
#37. Habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the knowledge, and still less to the understanding, of lawful relations.
David Hume
#38. There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse.
David Hume
#39. The law always limits every power it gives.
David Hume
#40. All inferences from experience ... are effects of custom, not of reasoning.
David Hume
#41. Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.
David Hume
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. Carelessness and in-attention alone can afford us any remedy. For this reason I rely entirely upon them.
David Hume
#48. 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
#49. Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.
David Hume
#50. (On belief in miracles) - The gazing populace receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder.
David Hume
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity.
David Hume
#57. [A] planet, wholly inhabited by spiders, (which is very possible)
David Hume
#58. 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
#60. [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
#61. A wise man apportions his beliefs to the evidence.
David Hume
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. It is, therefore, a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.
David Hume
#68. Anything that is conceivable is possible.
David Hume
#69. Superstition is an enemy to civil liberty.
David Hume
#70. 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
#71. I never asserted such an absurd thing as that things arise without a cause.
David Hume
#72. The religious hypothesis, therefore, must be considered only as a particular method of accounting for the visible phenomena of the universe: but no just reasoner will ever presume to infer from it any single fact, and alter or add to the phenomena, in any single particular.
David Hume
#73. The free conversation of a friend is what I would prefer to any environment.
David Hume
#74. There is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books.
David Hume
#75. Even after the observation of the frequent conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience.
David Hume
#76. Every movement of the theater by a skilful poet is communicated, as it were, by magic, to the spectators; who weep, tremble, resent, rejoice, and are inflamed with all the variety of passions which actuate the several personages of the drama.
David Hume
#77. Fine writing, according to Mr. Addison, consists of sentiments which are natural without being obvious.
David Hume
#78. Tho' there be no such Thing as Chance in the World; our Ignorance of the real Ccause of any Event has the same Influence on the Understanding, and begets a like Species of Belief or Opinion.
David Hume
#79. Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived.
David Hume
#80. Happy the man whom indulgent fortune allows to pay to virtue what he owes to nature, and to make a generous gift of what must otherwise be ravished from him by cruel necessity.
David Hume
#81. Liberty is a blessing so inestimable, that, wherever there appears any probability of recovering it, a nation may willingly run many hazards, and ought not even to repine at the greatest effusion of blood or dissipation of treasure.
David Hume
#82. To be a philosophical Sceptic is the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian.
David Hume
#83. Of all sciences there is none where first appearances are more deceitful than in politics.
David Hume
#84. The bigotry of theologians [is] a malady which seems almost incurable.
David Hume
#85. Obscurity, indeed, is painful to the mind as well as to the eye; but to bring light from obscurity, by whatever labour, must needsbe delightful and rejoicing.
David Hume
#86. 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.
David Hume
#87. We make allowance for a certain degree of selfishness in men; because we know it to be inseparable from human nature, and inherent in our frame and constitution. By this reflexion we correct those sentiments of blame, which so naturally arise upon any opposition.
David Hume
#88. It is possible for the same thing both to be and not to be.
David Hume
#89. Mankind are always found prodigal both of blood and treasure in the maintenance of public justice.
David Hume
#90. Governments too steady and uniform, as they are seldom free, so are they, in the judgment of some attended with another sensible inconvenience: they abate the active powers of men; depress courage, invention, and genius; and produce a universal lethary in the people.
David Hume
#91. Art may make a suit of clothes, but nature must produce a man.
David Hume
#92. Among the arts of conversation no one pleases more than mutual deference or civility, which leads us to resign our own inclinations to those of our companions, and to curb and conceal that presumption and arrogance so natural to the human mind.
David Hume
#93. Nothing appears more surprizing 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.
David Hume
#94. Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.
David Hume
#95. In a vain man, the smallest spark may kindle into the greatest flame, because the materials are always prepared for it.
David Hume
#96. Grief and disappointment give rise to anger, anger to envy, envy to malice, and malice to grief again, till the whole circle be completed.
David Hume
#97. 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.
David Hume
#98. The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation
David Hume
#99. Absolute monarchy, ... is the easiest death, the true Euthanasia of the BRITISH constitution.
David Hume
#100. 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.
David Hume
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