Top 300 David Hume Quotes (2024 Update)

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

— David Hume

2. “All knowledge degenerates into probability.”

— David Hume

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

— David Hume

4. “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”

— David Hume

5. “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

6. “If God is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good, whence evil? If God wills to prevent evil but cannot, then He is not omnipotent. If He can prevent evil but does not, then he is not good. In either case he is not God.”

— David Hume

7. “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.”

— David Hume

8. “The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.”

— David Hume

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

— David Hume

10. “Anticipation of pleasure is, in itself, a very considerable pleasure.”

— David Hume

11. “Anything that is conceivable is possible.”

— David Hume

12. “Truth springs from argument amongst friends.”

— David Hume

13. “Which is more likely: that the whole natural order is suspended, or that a jewish minx should tell a lie?”

— David Hume

14. “A little philosophy makes a man an Atheist: a great deal converts him to religion.”

— David Hume

15. “Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.”

— David Hume

16. “Time is a perishable commodity.”

— David Hume

17. “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.”

— David Hume

18. “Self-denial is a monkish virtue.”

— David Hume

19. “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.”

— David Hume

20. “Superstition is an enemy to civil liberty.”

— David Hume

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

— David Hume

22. “For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.”

— David Hume

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

— David Hume

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

— David Hume

25. “The supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit.”

— David Hume

26. “Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature.”

— David Hume

27. “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.”

— David Hume

28. “The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.”

— David Hume

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

— David Hume

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

— David Hume

31. “Men often act knowingly against their interest.”

— David Hume

32. “Custom is the great guide to human life.”

— David Hume

33. “The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation.”

— David Hume

34. “Curiosity, or the love of knowledge, has a very limited influence, and requires youth, leisure education, genius and example to make it govern any person.”

— David Hume

35. “Nothing exists without a cause, the original cause of this universe we call God.”

— David Hume

36. “While we are reasoning concerning life, life is gone.”

— David Hume

37. “The imagination of man is naturally sublime, delighted with whatever is remote and extraordinary, and running, without control, into the most distant parts of space and time in order to avoid the objects, which custom has rendered too familiar to it.”

— David Hume

38. “The law always limits every power it gives.”

— David Hume

39. “Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.”

— David Hume

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

— David Hume

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

— David Hume

42. “Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains.”

— David Hume

43. “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

44. “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

45. “What we call a mind is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity and identity.”

— David Hume

46. “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

47. “The great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of scepticism is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life.”

— David Hume

48. “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

49. “Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.”

— David Hume

Featured in: Strong Quotes

50. “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