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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.

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
Mind
Fictitious
Things
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Belonging
Established
Peculiar
Identity
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Nature

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Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.
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While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain.
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As every inquiry which regards religion is of the utmost importance, there are two questions in particular which challenge our attention, to wit, that concerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning it origin in human nature.
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The free conversation of a friend is what I would prefer to any environment.
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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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To invent without scruple a new principle to every new phenomenon, instead of adapting it to the old to overload our hypothesis with a variety of this kind, are certain proofs that none of these principles is the just one, and that we only desire, by a number of falsehoods, to cover our ignorance of the truth.
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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's when we start working together that the real healing takes place... it's when we start spilling our sweat, and not our blood.
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Anything that is conceivable is possible.
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Heroism, or military glory, is much admired by the generality of mankind. They consider it as the most sublime kind of merit. Menof cool reflection are not so sanguine in their praises of it.
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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.
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Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass.
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Courage, of all national qualities, is the most precarious because it is exerted only at intervals, and by a few in every nation whereas industry, knowledge, civility, may be of constant and universal use, and for several ages, may become habitual to the whole people.
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I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another.
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Habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the knowledge, and still less to the understanding, of lawful relations.
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For the purposes of life and conduct, and society, a little good sense is surely better than all this genius, and a little good humour than this extreme sensibility.
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When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.
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[A person’s] utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value.
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The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.
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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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