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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
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Men

More quotes by David Hume

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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.
David Hume
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Art may make a suite of clothes, but nature must produce a man.
David Hume
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I do not have enough faith to believe there is no god.
David Hume
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What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, that we must thus make it the model of the whole universe? Our partiality in our own favour does indeed present it on all occasions but sound philosophy ought carefully to guard against so natural an illusion.
David Hume
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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.
David Hume
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In all the events of life, we ought still to preserve our scepticism. If we believe that fire warms, or water refreshes, it is only because it costs us too much pains to think otherwise.
David Hume
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Examine the religious principles which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded that they are other than sick men's dreams.
David Hume
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But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life because that has never been observed in any age or country.
David Hume
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Nothing is demonstrable, unless the contrary implies a contradiction. Nothing, that is distinctly conceivable, implies a contradiction. Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent. There is no being, therefore, whose non-existence implies a contradiction. Consequently there is no being, whose existence is demonstrable.
David Hume
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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
David Hume
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The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.
David Hume
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It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.
David Hume
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[Rousseau] has not had the precaution to throw any veil over his sentiments and as he scorns to dissemble his contempt of established opinions, he could not wonder that all the zealots were in arms against him.
David Hume
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All inferences from experience... are effects of custom, not of reasoning.
David Hume
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When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?
David Hume
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Methinks I am like a man, who having struck on many shoals, and having narrowly escap'd shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances.
David Hume
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When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.
David Hume
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The most pernicious of all taxes are the arbitrary.
David Hume
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The stability of modern governments above the ancient, and the accuracy of modern philosophy, have improved, and probably will still improve, by similar gradations.
David Hume
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.. that which renders morality an active principle and constitutes virtue our happiness, and vice our misery: it is probable, I say, that this final sentence depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species.
David Hume