David Hume

David Hume

25 quotes

As a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist and essayist, David Hume earned a lasting place in the canon of memorable quotations. Their reputation for his highly influential system of empiricism, philosophical scepticism and metaphysical naturalism lends every quote an extra layer of authority. Our collection holds 37 quotes from David Hume, each offering a different angle on Nature, History, Beauty, Truth, and Religion. Readers often gravitate to this one: "Truth springs from argument amongst friends."

“This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society.”

— David Hume

Alone

All Quotes by David Hume

“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.”

— David Hume

Beauty

“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.”

— David Hume

Government

“Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.”

— David Hume

Truth

“Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.”

— David Hume

Beauty

“A propensity to hope and joy is real riches one to fear and sorrow real poverty.”

— David Hume

Fear

“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.”

— David Hume

History

“Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived.”

— David Hume

Beauty

“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.”

— David Hume

Religion

“Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.”

— David Hume

Nature

“The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.”

— David Hume

Patriotism

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

— David Hume

Nature

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

— David Hume

Knowledge

“The law always limits every power it gives.”

— David Hume

Power

“This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society.”

— David Hume

Alone

“Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous those in philosophy only ridiculous.”

— David Hume

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.”

— David Hume

Good

“Men often act knowingly against their interest.”

— David Hume

Men

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

— David Hume

Death

“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.”

— David Hume

Nature

“The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.”

— David Hume

Best