Top 300 David Hume Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Morals and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment.”

— David Hume

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

— David Hume

53. “There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.”

— David Hume

54. “Nothing is pure and entire of a piece. All advantages are attended with disadvantages. A universal compensation prevails in all conditions of being and existence.”

— David Hume

55. “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

56. “No man ever threw away life while it was worth keeping.”

— David Hume

57. “We need only reflect on what has been prov’d at large, that we are never sensible of any connexion betwixt causes and effects, and that ’tis only by our experience of their constant conjunction, we can arrive at any knowledge of this relation.”

— David Hume

58. “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

59. “When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.”

— David Hume

60. “The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness.”

— David Hume

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

— David Hume

62. “From causes which appear similar, we expect similar effects. This is the sum total of all our experimental conclusions.”

— David Hume

63. “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.”

— David Hume

64. “Though men of delicate taste be rare, they are easily to be distinguished in society by the soundness of their understanding, and the superiority of their faculties above the rest of mankind.”

— David Hume

65. “No quality of human nature is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however different from, or even contrary to our own.”

— David Hume

66. “A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.”

— David Hume

67. “By the term ‘impression’, then, I mean all our more lively perceptions when we hear or see or feel or love or hate or desire or will. These are to be distinguished from ideas, which are the fainter perceptions of which we are conscious when we reflect on our impressions.”

— David Hume

68. “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

69. “Luxury is a word of uncertain signification, and may be taken in a good as in a bad sense.”

— David Hume

70. “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.”

— David Hume

71. “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

72. “Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.”

— David Hume

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

— David Hume

74. “In a vain man, the smallest spark may kindle into the greatest flame, because the materials are always prepared for it.”

— David Hume

75. “I may venture to affirm 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

76. “When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”

— David Hume

77. “Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding.”

— David Hume

78. “The unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to be so.”

— David Hume

79. “Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone, which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past.”

— David Hume

80. “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.”

— David Hume

81. “The end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duty; and, by proper representations of the deformity of vice and beauty of virtue, beget correspondent habits, and engage us to avoid the one, and embrace the other.”

— David Hume

82. “All morality depends upon our sentiments; and when any action or quality of the mind pleases us after a certain manner we say it is virtuous; and when the neglect or nonperformance of it displeases us after a like manner, we say that we lie under an obligation to perform it.”

— David Hume

83. “When we reflect on our past sentiments and affections, our thought is a faithful mirror, and copies its objects truly; but the colours which it employs are faint and dull, in comparison of those in which our original perceptions were clothed.”

— David Hume

84. “And what is the greatest number? Number one.”

— David Hume

85. “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

86. “It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have preference above the accurate.”

— David Hume

87. “Nothing appears more surprising 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

88. “The feelings of our heart, the agitation of our passions, the vehemence of our affections, dissipate all its conclusions, and reduce the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian.”

— David Hume

89. “When I hear that a man is religious, I conclude he is a rascal!”

— David Hume

90. “Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers.”

— David Hume

91. “No truth appears to me more evident than that beasts are endowed with thought and reason as well as men.”

— David Hume

92. “Examine the religious principles which have, in fact, prevailed in the world, and you will scarcely be persuaded that they are anything but sick men’s dreams.”

— David Hume

93. “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.”

— David Hume

94. “It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.”

— David Hume

95. “Everything in the world is purchased by labor.”

— David Hume

96. “Enthusiasm produces the most cruel disorders in human society; but its fury is like that of thunder and tempest, which exhaust themselves in a little time, and leave the air more calm and serene than before.”

— David Hume

97. “We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but ’tis vain to ask. Whether there be body or not? That is a point which we must take for granted in all our reasonings.”

— David Hume

98. “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.”

— David Hume

99. “It were better, never to look beyond the present material world. By supposing it to contain the principle of its order within itself, we really assert it to be God; and the sooner we arrive at that divinity, the better.”

— David Hume

100. “Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press.”

— David Hume