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Men often act knowingly against their interest.

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
Knowingly
Philosophical
Interest
Often
Men

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It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.
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When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities.
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Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press.
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Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.
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The identity that we ascribe to things is only a fictitious one, established by the mind, not a peculiar nature belonging to what we’re talking about.
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Time is a perishable commodity.
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Virtue, like wholesome food, is better than poisons, however corrected.
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All inferences from experience... are effects of custom, not of reasoning.
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Almost every one has a predominant inclination, to which his other desires and affections submit, and which governs him, though perhaps with some intervals, though the whole course of his life.
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Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
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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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I cannot but bless the memory of Julius Caesar, for the great esteem he expressed for fat men and his aversion to lean ones.
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A propensity to hope and joy is real riches one to fear and sorrow real poverty.
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We may observe that, in displaying the praises of any humane, beneficent man, there is one circumstance which never fails to be amply insisted on, namely, the happiness and satisfaction, derived to society from his intercourse and good offices.
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Convulsions in nature, disorders, prodigies, miracles, though the most opposite of the plan of a wise superintendent, impress mankind with the strongest sentiments of religion.
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Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous those in philosophy only ridiculous.
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Every movement of the theater by a skilful poet is communicated, as it were, by magic, to the spectators who weep, tremble, resent, rejoice, and are inflamed with all the variety of passions which actuate the several personages of the drama.
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Nothing is more favorable to the rise of politeness and learning, than a number of neighboring and independent states, connected together by commerce and policy.
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Nothing more powerfully excites any affection than to conceal some part of its object, by throwing it into a kind of shade, whichat the same time that it shows enough to prepossess us in favour of the object, leaves still some work for the imagination.
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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.
David Hume