George Berkeley
George Berkeley
George Berkeley— known as Bishop Berkeley— was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism". This theory denies the existence of material substance and instead contends that familiar objects like tables and chairs are only ideas in the minds of perceivers, and as a result cannot exist without being perceived. Berkeley is also known for his critique of abstraction, an important premise in his argument for immaterialism...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth12 March 1685
CountryIreland
Religion is the centre which unites, and the cement which connects the several parts of members of the political body.
Whatever is immediately perceived is an idea: and can any idea exist out of the mind?
From my own being, and from the dependency I find in myself and my ideas, I do, by an act of reason, necessarily infer the existence of a God, and of all created things in the mind of God.
That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow.
[Tar water] is of a nature so mild and benign and proportioned to the human constitution, as to warm without heating, to cheer but not inebriate.
Of all men living [priests] are our greatest enemies. If it were possible, they would extinguish the very light of nature, turn the world into a dungeon, and keep mankind for ever in chains and darkness.
Westward the course of empire takes its way; The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day: Time's noblest offspring is the last.
If we admit a thing so extraordinary as the creation of this world, it should seem that we admit something strange, and odd, and new to human apprehension, beyond any other miracle whatsoever.
What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.
Certainly he who can digest a second or third fluxion need not, methinks, be squeamish about any point in divinity.
It is a mistake, to think the same thing affects both sight and touch. If the same angle or square, which is the object of touch,be also the object of vision, what should hinder the blind man, at first sight, from knowing it?
Whenever I attempt to frame a simple idea of time, abstracted from the succession of ideas in my mind, which flows uniformly, and is participated by all beings, I am lost and embrangled in inextricable difficulties.
[Christianity] neither enjoins the nastiness of the Cynic, nor the insensibility of the Stoic.
Colour, Figure, Motion, Extension and the like, considered only so many Sensations in the Mind, are perfectly known, there being nothing in them which is not perceived. But if they are looked on as notes or Images, referred to Things or Archetypes existing without the Mind, then are we involved all in Scepticism.