David Hume Quotes

Indulge your passion for science…but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Be a philosopher; but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.

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.

We make allowance for a certain degree of selfishness in men; because we know it to be inseparable from human nature, and inherent in our frame and constitution. By this reflexion we correct those sentiments of blame, which so naturally arise upon any opposition.

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.
…'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.

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

Scepticism may be theoretically irrefutable, but even the sceptic must ‘act … and live, and converse, like other men’, since human nature gives him no choice.

To philosopher and historian the madness and imbecile wickedness of mankind ought to appear ordinary events.

To be a philosophical Sceptic is the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian.

It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.

All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance
and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not
to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is
supported by no appearance of probability.

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. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. The soldan of Egypt, or the emperor of Rome, might drive his harmless subjects, like brute beasts, against their sentiments and inclination. But he must at least have led his mamalukes, or prætorian bands, like men, by their opinion.

Men's views of things are the result of their understanding alone. Their conduct is regulated by their understanding, their temper, and their passions.

it is possible for the same thing both to be and not to be.

All knowledge degenerates into probability.

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