David Hume
David Hume
David Hume– 25 August 1776) or David Homewas a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of radical philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth7 May 1711
god causes absurd
I never asserted such an absurd thing as that things arise without a cause.
experience reason conjunctions
Even after the observation of the frequent conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience.
air people victory
Among well bred people a mutual deference is affected, contempt for others is disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority.
human-nature born unfortunate
Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press.
past knavery way
It is more rational to suspect knavery and folly than to discount, at a stroke, everything that past experience has taught me about the way things actually work
perception movement may
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.
believe men law
But I would still reply, that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena, that I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence, than admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature
powerful sorrow influence
Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence.
care form assurance
The more instances we examine, and the more care we employ, the more assurance shall we acquire, that the enumeration, which we form from the whole, is complete and entire.
gazing examination superstitions
The gazing populace receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder.
age signals crusades
The Crusades - the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation.
art nature men
It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the under-workman, and is employed to give a few strokes of embellishment to those pieces, which come from the hand of the master.
novelty please accounts
Such is the nature of novelty that where anything pleases it becomes doubly agreeable if new; but if it displeases, it is doubly displeasing on that very account.
determination may might
These arguments on each side (and many more might be produced) are so plausible, that I am apt to suspect, they may, the one as well as the other, be solid and satisfactory, and that reason and sentiment concur in almost all moral determinations and conclusions.