150 Quotes by David Hume
David Hume, an Enlightenment philosopher, stands as a pivotal figure in the history of philosophy, reshaping the landscape of epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics. His empiricist approach, outlined in works like "A Treatise of Human Nature," emphasized the role of sensory experience as the foundation of human knowledge.
Hume's critical examination of causality and his argument against the existence of necessary connections challenged prevailing notions of causation and rationality. His "Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" further distilled his ideas into a more accessible format, offering insights into human psychology, skepticism, and the limitations of human reason.
Hume's contributions to philosophy continue to influence contemporary debates, and his exploration of the human mind's intricacies remains an enduring source of inspiration for philosophers and thinkers across generations.
David Hume Quotes
There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse.
Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.
Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.
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.
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
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.
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.
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.
The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.
Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man.
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.
All knowledge degenerates into probability.
A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow real poverty.
Mohammed praises [instances of] tretchery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, and bigotry that are utterly incompatible with civilized society.
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
When I hear that a man is religious, I conclude he is a rascal!
In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies of liberty.
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.
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.
To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive.
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.
Reading and sauntering and lounging and dosing, which I call thinking, is my supreme Happiness.
He is happy whom circumstances suit his temper; but he Is more excellent who suits his temper to any circumstance.
All power, even the most despotic, rests ultimately on opinion.
When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.
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.
The heart of man is made to reconcile the most glaring contradictions.
It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.
The Crusades - the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation.
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.
It's when we start working together that the real healing takes place... it's when we start spilling our sweat, and not our blood.
Habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the knowledge, and still less to the understanding, of lawful relations.
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.
Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients: action, pleasure and indolence.
Custom is the great guide to human life.
A little philosophy makes a man an Atheist: a great deal converts him to religion
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.
Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude.
Eloquence, when in its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection.
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.
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.
Of all the animals with which this globe is peopled, there is none towards whom nature seems, at first sight, to have exercised more cruelty than towards man, in the numberless wants and necessities with which she has loaded him, and in the slender means which she affords to the relieving these necessities.
A wise man's kingdom is his own breast: or, if he ever looks farther, it will only be to the judgment of a select few, who are free from prejudices, and capable of examining his work. Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude; and Phocion, you know, always suspected himself of some blunder when he was attended with the applauses of the populace.
The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.
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.
Everything in the world is purchased by labor.
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 Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.
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.
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.
I do not have enough faith to believe there is no god.
The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.
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.
Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.
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.
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.
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.
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.
I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilization of their complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or speculation.
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.
Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.
What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call 'thought'.
To philosopher and historian the madness and imbecile wickedness of mankind ought to appear ordinary events.
When suicide is out of fashion we conclude that none but madmen destroy themselves; and all the efforts of courage appear chimerical to dastardly minds. Nevertheless, how many instances are there, well attested, of men, in every other respect perfectly discreet, who, without remorse, rage, or despair, have quitted life for no other reason than because it was a burden to them, and have died with more composure than they lived?
Of all sciences there is none where first appearances are more deceitful than in politics.
Men often act knowingly against their interest.
It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause.
The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation.
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.
In a vain man, the smallest spark may kindle into the greatest flame, because the materials are always prepared for it.
Nothing is so improving to the temper as the study of the beauties either of poetry, eloquence, music, or painting.
Berkeley , Hume, Kant , Fichte , Hegel , James , Bergson all are united in one earnest attempt, the attempt to reinstate man with his high spiritual claims in a place of importance in the cosmic scheme.
While we are reasoning concerning life, life is gone.
No truth appears to me more evident than that beasts are endowed with thought and reason as well as men.
Nothing but the most determined skepticism, along with a great degree of indolence, can justify this aversion to metaphysics. For if truth be at all within the reach of human capacity, it is certain it must lie very deep and abstruse: and to hope we shall arrive at it without pains, while the greatest geniuses have failed with the utmost pains, must certainly be esteemed sufficiently vain and presumptuous.
Superstitions, which, being unable to defend themselves on fair ground, raise these intangling brambles to cover and protect their weakness. Chased from the open country, these robbers fly into the forest, and lie in wait to break in upon every unguarded avenue of the mind, and overwhelm it with religious fears and prejudices.
Truth springs from argument amongst friends.
When we reflect on the shortness and uncertainty of life, how despicable seem all our pursuits of happiness.
The bigotry of theologians is a malady which seems almost incurable.
Superstition is an enemy to civil liberty.
It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the under-workman, and is employed to give a few strokes of embellishment to those pieces, which come from the hand of the master.
The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.
In this sullen apathy neither true wisdom nor true happiness can be found.
A man who has cured himself of all ridiculous prepossessions, and is fully, sincerely, and steadily convinced, from experience as well as philosophy, that the difference of fortune makes less difference in happiness than is vulgarly imagined; such a one does not measure out degrees of esteem according to the rent-rolls of his acquaintance. ... his internal sentiments are more regulated by the personal characters of men, than by the accidental and capricious favors of fortune.
And though the philosopher may live remote from business, the genius of philosophy, if carefully cultivated by several, must gradually diffuse itself throughout the whole society, and bestow a similar correctness on every art and calling.
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.
History is the discovering of the principles of human nature.
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.
Liberty of any kind is never lost all at once.
Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived.
The fact that different cultures have different practices no more refutes [moral] objectivism than the fact that water flows in different directions in different places refutes the law of gravity
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.
Self-denial is a monkish virtue.
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.
The law always limits every power it gives.
The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise and good Being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom.
No man ever threw away life while it was worth keeping.
And what is the greatest number? Number one.
Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, inpregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children.
This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society.
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.
Praise never gives us much pleasure unless it concur with our own opinion, and extol us for those qualities in which we chiefly excel.
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.
Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.
Anticipation of pleasure is, in itself, a very considerable pleasure.
Nothing exists without a cause, the original cause of this universe we call God.
Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains.
I never asserted such an absurd thing as that things arise without a cause.
The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds.
Every court of criminal justice must have the power of correcting the greatest and dangerous of all abuses of the forms of law - that of the protracted imprisonment of the accused, untried, perhaps not intended ever to be tried, it may be, not informed of the nature of the charge against him, or the name of the accuser.
Avarice, the spur of industry, is so obstinate a passion, and works its way through so many real dangers and difficulties, that it is not likely to be scared by an imaginary danger, which is so small, that it scarcely admits of calculation. Commerce, therefore, in my opinion, is apt to decay in absolute governments, not because it is there less secure, but because it is less honourable.
The simplest and most obvious cause which can there be assigned for any phenomena, is probably the true one.
Anything that is conceivable is possible.
The supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit.
The unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to be so.
Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.
Grief and disappointment give rise to anger, anger to envy, envy to malice, and malice to grief again, till the whole circle be completed.
When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. All the world conspires to oppose and contradict me; though such is my weakness, that I feel all my opinions loosen and fall of themselves, when unsupported by the approbation of others.
God is an ever-present spirit guiding all that happens to a wise and holy end.
Almost every one has a predominant inclination, to which his other desires and affections submit, and which governs him, though perhaps with some intervals, though the whole course of his life.
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.
Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact; it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors.
But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country.
The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness
No human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion
Time is a perishable commodity.
Truth is disputable, not human taste.
.. that which renders morality an active principle and constitutes virtue our happiness, and vice our misery: it is probable, I say, that this final sentence depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species.
It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause; for this may be done by one great or wise action in an age. But to escape censure a man must pass his whole life without saying or doing one ill or foolish thing
The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it.
The gazing populace receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder.
All arguments concerning existence are founded on the relation of cause and effect; that our knowledge of that relation is derived entirely from experience; and all our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition that the future will be conformable to the past. .... Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses.
In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty; and it is certain, that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. 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; and, by an infallible connexion, which prevails among all kinds of liberty, this privilege can never be enjoyed, at least has never yet been enjoyed, but in a free government.
In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.
Justice is a moral virtue, merely because it has that tendency to the good of mankind, and indeed is nothing but an artificial invention to that purpose. The same may be said of allegiance, of the laws of nations, of modesty, and of good manners. All these are mere human contrivances for the interest of society.
Disbelief in futurity loosens in a great measure the ties of morality, and may be for that reason pernicious to the peace of civil society.
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.
The consequence of a very free commerce between the sexes, and of their living much together, will often terminate in intrigues and gallantry.
The most pernicious of all taxes are the arbitrary.
the senses alone are not implicitly to be depended on. We must correct their evidence by reason, and by considerations, derived from the nature of the medium, the distance of the object, and the disposition of the organ, in order to render them, within their sphere, the proper criteria of truth and falsehood.
Avarice, or the desire of gain, is a universal passion which operates at all times, at all places, and upon all persons.
The voice of nature and experience seems plainly to oppose the selfish theory.
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.
From causes which appear similar, we expect similar effects. This is the sum total of all our experimental conclusions.
Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.
All inferences from experience... are effects of custom, not of reasoning.
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.
Such a superiority do the pursuits of literature possess above every other occupation, that even he who attains but a mediocrity in them, merits the pre-eminence above those that excel the most in the common and vulgar professions.
― David Hume Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
