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 HUMEWe should never know how to adjust means to ends, or to employ our natural powers in the production of any effect. There would be an end at once of all action, as well as of the chief part of speculation.
More David Hume Quotes
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The gazing populace receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder.
DAVID HUME -
Epicurus’s old questions are still unanswered: Is he (God) willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? then whence evil?
DAVID HUME -
Nothing is more usual than for philosophers to encroach upon the province of grammarians; and to engage in disputes of words, while they imagine that they are handling controversies of the deepest importance and concern
DAVID HUME -
What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call ‘thought’
DAVID HUME -
The Crusades – the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation.
DAVID HUME -
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.
DAVID HUME -
A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.
DAVID HUME -
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.
DAVID HUME -
All knowledge degenerates into probability.
DAVID HUME -
In public affairs men are often better pleased that the truth, though known to everybody, should be wrapped up under a decent cover than if it were exposed in open daylight to the eyes of all the world.
DAVID HUME -
It is, therefore, a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.
DAVID HUME -
I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense, who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries.
DAVID HUME -
The bigotry of theologians is a malady which seems almost incurable.
DAVID HUME -
I weigh the one miracle against the other and according to the superiority which I discover, I pronounce my decision.
DAVID HUME -
I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.
DAVID HUME -
Carelessness and in-attention alone can afford us any remedy. For this reason I rely entirely upon them.
DAVID HUME -
It is possible for the same thing both to be and not to be.
DAVID HUME -
No man ever threw away life while it was worth keeping.
DAVID HUME -
Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return?
DAVID HUME -
But the life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.
DAVID HUME -
It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity.
DAVID HUME -
There is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books.
DAVID HUME -
The truth springs from arguments amongst friends.
DAVID HUME -
All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it.
DAVID HUME -
But the greatest part of mankind float between vice and virtue.
DAVID HUME -
The science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences.
DAVID HUME