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A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

David Hume

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David Hume
Age: 65 †
Born: 1711
Born: April 26
Died: 1776
Died: August 25
Economist
Essayist
Historian
Librarian
Philosopher
Writer
Edinburgh
Scotland
David Home
Hume
Evidence
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Wisdom
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Religion
Humanist
Mind
Proportion
Men
Atheism

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I never asserted such an absurd thing as that things arise without a cause.
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What would become of history, had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian, according to the experience, what we have had of mankind?
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Reasoning from the common course of nature, and without supposing any new interposition of the Supreme Cause, which ought always to be excluded from philosophy what is incorruptible must also be ingenerable. The soul, therefore, if immortal, existed before our birth: And if the former existence noways concerned us, neither will the latter.
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It seems to me, that the only Objects of the abstract Sciences or of Demonstration is Quantity and Number, and that all Attempts to extend this more perfect Species of Knowledge beyond these Bounds are mere Sophistry and Illusion.
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Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone, which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past.
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[priests are] the pretenders to power and dominion, and to a superior sanctity of character, distinct from virtue and good morals.
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Accurate and just reasoning is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons and all dispositions and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon, which, being mixed up with popular superstition, renders it in a manner impenetrable to careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom.
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When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.
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Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors.
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What praise is implied in the simple epithet useful! What reproach in the contrary.
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The end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duty and, by proper representations of the deformity of vice and beauty of virtue, beget correspondent habits, and engage us to avoid the one, and embrace the other.
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All knowledge resolves itself into probability. ... In every judgment, which we can form concerning probability, as well as concerning knowledge, we ought always to correct the first judgment deriv'd from the nature of the object, by another judgment, deriv'd from the nature of the understanding.
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Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature.
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I do not have enough faith to believe there is no god.
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If morality had naturally no influence on human passions and actions, it were in vain to take such pains to inculcate it and nothing would be more fruitless than that multitude of rules and precepts with which all moralists abound.
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All morality depends upon our sentiments and when any action or quality of the mind pleases us after a certain manner we say it is virtuous and when the neglect or nonperformance of it displeases us after a like manner, we say that we lie under an obligation to perform it.
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the senses alone are not implicitly to be depended on. We must correct their evidence by reason, and by considerations, derived from the nature of the medium, the distance of the object, and the disposition of the organ, in order to render them, within their sphere, the proper criteria of truth and falsehood.
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Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.
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Municipal laws are a supply to the wisdom of each individual and, at the same time, by restraining the natural liberty of men, make private interest submit to the interest of the public.
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All this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us the by senses and experience.
David Hume