David Hume Quotes (75 Quotes)

Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Custom is the great guide to human life.

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

And what is the greatest number? Number one.

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

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

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

The many instances of forged miracles, and prophecies, and supernatural events, which, in all ages, have either been detected by contrary evidence, or which detect themselves by their absurdity, prove sufficiently the strong propensity of mankind to

History is the discovering of the constant and universal principles of human nature.

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

Nothing can be more unphilosophical than to be positiveor dogmatical on any subject.

Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.

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.

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 corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.

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

Beauty is no quality in things themselves. It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.

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.

The most unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to be so.

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