“This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society.”
Alone
“Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.”
BeautyAll Quotes by David Hume
“Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.”
Knowledge“A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.”
Design“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.”
Education“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.”
History“Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.”
Truth“The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.”
Best“Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived.”
Beauty“Men often act knowingly against their interest.”
Men“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.”
Religion“Human Nature is the only science of man and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.”
Nature“Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous those in philosophy only ridiculous.”
Religion“The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.”
Patriotism“Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.”
Beauty“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.”
Alone“Truth springs from argument amongst friends.”
Truth“There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.”
Nature“Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.”
Nature“Every wise, just, and mild government, by rendering the condition of its subjects easy and secure, will always abound most in people, as well as in commodities and riches.”
Government“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.”
History