Quotes By David Hume

The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue.

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.

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.

Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.

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.

It is a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.

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

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

Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence.

And what is the greatest number? Number one.

I have written on all sorts of subjects... yet I have no enemies; except indeed all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.

No advantages in this world are pure and unmixed.

Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.

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

There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.

Accuracy is, in every case, advantageous to beauty, and just reasoning to delicate sentiment. In vain would we exalt the one by depreciating the other.

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.

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

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

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

Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.

To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential to being a sound, believing Christian.

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

Everything in the world is purchased by labor.

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

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.

The law always limits every power it gives.

Avarice, the spur of industry.

A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.