“The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.”
Best
“The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.”
PatriotismAll Quotes by David Hume
“Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.”
Truth“Men often act knowingly against their interest.”
Men“Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.”
Nature“Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.”
Beauty“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“Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.”
Knowledge“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“A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.”
Design“This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society.”
Alone“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“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“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“Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived.”
Beauty“The law always limits every power it gives.”
Power“Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence.”
Death“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.”
Beauty“A propensity to hope and joy is real riches one to fear and sorrow real poverty.”
Fear