David Hume was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. These David Hume quotes will motivate you.
Best David Hume Quotes
- “There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse.” ~ David Hume
- “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.” ~ David Hume
- “Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.” ~ David Hume
- “When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.” ~ David Hume
- “Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.” ~ David Hume
- “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
- “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
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“All knowledge degenerates into probability.” ~ David Hume
- “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
- “The difference between a man who is led by opinion or emotion and one who is led by reason. The former, whether he will or not, performs things of which he is entirely ignorant; the latter is subordinate to no one, and only does those things which he knows to be of primary importance in his life, and which on that account he desires the most; and therefore I call the former a slave, but the latter free.” ~ David Hume
- “The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.” ~ David Hume
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“Truth springs from argument amongst friends.” ~ David Hume
- “To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive.” ~ David Hume
- “Nothing exists without a cause, the original cause of this universe we call God.” ~ David Hume
- “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
- “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
- “The greater part of mankind may be divided into two classes; that of shallow thinkers who fall short of the truth; and that of abstruse thinkers who go beyond it.” ~ David Hume
- “Mohammed praises [instances of] tretchery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, and bigotry that are utterly incompatible with civilized society.” ~ David Hume
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“It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.” ~ David Hume
- “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.” ~ David Hume
- “While we are reasoning concerning life, life is gone.” ~ David Hume
- “Your corn is ripe today, mine will be so tomorrow. ‘Tis profitable for us both that I should labor with you today, and that you should aid me tomorrow. I have no kindness for you, and know you have as little for me. I will not, therefore, take any pains upon your account . . . Here then I leave you to labor alone; you treat me in the same manner. The seasons change, and both of us lose our harvests for want of mutual confidence and security.” ~ David Hume
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“A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow real poverty.” ~ David Hume
- “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
- “All power, even the most despotic, rests ultimately on opinion.” ~ David Hume
- “When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities.” ~ David Hume
- “When I hear that a man is religious, I conclude he is a rascal!” ~ David Hume
- “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
- “The mind is a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.” ~ David Hume
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“Everything in the world is purchased by labor.” ~ David Hume
- “Time is a perishable commodity.” ~ David Hume
- “Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients: action, pleasure, and indolence.” ~ David Hume
- “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
- “Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man.” ~ David Hume
- “Anticipation of pleasure is, in itself, a very considerable pleasure.” ~ David Hume
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“A little philosophy makes a man an Atheist: a great deal converts him to religion” ~ David Hume
- “But, historians, and even common sense, may inform us, that, however specious these ideas of perfect equality may seem, they are really, at bottom, impracticable; and were they not so, would be extremely pernicious to human society. Render possessions ever so equal, men’s different degrees of art, care, and industry will immediately break that equality. Or if you check these virtues, you reduce society to the most extreme indigence; and instead of preventing want and beggary in a few, render it unavoidable to the whole community.” ~ David Hume
- “Liberty of any kind is never lost all at once.” ~ David Hume
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“The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.” ~ David Hume
- “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
- “The sweetest path of life leads through the avenues of learning, and whoever can open up the way for another, ought, so far, to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind.” ~ David Hume
- “History is the discovering of the principles of human nature.” ~ David Hume
- “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.” ~ David Hume
- “Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.” ~ David Hume
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“It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause.” ~ David Hume
- “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
- “Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude.” ~ David Hume
- “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
- “Habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the knowledge, and still less to the understanding, of lawful relations.” ~ David Hume
- “Examine the religious principles which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded that they are other than sick men’s dreams.” ~ David Hume
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“The law always limits every power it gives.” ~ David Hume
- “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
- “We have no other notion of cause and effect, but that of certain objects, which have always conjoined together, and which in all past instances have been found inseparable. We cannot penetrate into the reason of the conjunction. We only observe the thing itself, and always find that from the constant conjunction the objects acquire an union in the imagination.” ~ David Hume
- “From causes which appear similar, we expect similar effects. This is the sum total of all our experimental conclusions.” ~ David Hume
- “He is happy whom circumstances suit his temper; but he Is more excellent who suits his temper to any circumstance.” ~ David Hume
- “To philosopher and historian the madness and imbecile wickedness of mankind ought to appear ordinary events.” ~ David Hume
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“Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.” ~ David Hume
- “The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds.” ~ David Hume
- “When I shall be dead, the principles of which I am composed will still perform their part in the universe, and will be equally useful in the grand fabric, as when they composed this individual creature. The difference to the whole will be no greater betwixt my being in a chamber and in the open air. The one change is of more importance to me than the other; but not more so to the universe.” ~ David Hume
- “In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies of liberty.” ~ David Hume
- “No truth appears to me more evident than that beasts are endowed with thought and reason as well as men.” ~ David Hume
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“I do not have enough faith to believe there is no god.” ~ David Hume
- “Reading and sauntering and lounging and dosing, which I call thinking, is my supreme happiness.” ~ David Hume
- “No man ever threw away life while it was worth keeping.” ~ David Hume
- “Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains.” ~ David Hume
