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The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation.

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
Sensations
Lazy
Thought
Stills
Dullest
Still
Lively
Inferior
Sensation
Inferiors

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Every wise, just, and mild government, by rendering the condition of its subjects easy and secure, will always abound most in people, as well as in commodities and riches.
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The feelings of our heart, the agitation of our passions, the vehemence of our affections, dissipate all its conclusions, and reduce the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian
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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.
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An infinite number of real parts of time, passing in succession, and exhausted one after another, appears so evident a contradiction, that no man, one should think, whose judgement is not corrupted, instead of being improved, by the sciences, would ever be able to admit of it.
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Eloquence, when in its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection.
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It is... a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.
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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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Mohammed praises [instances of] tretchery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, and bigotry that are utterly incompatible with civilized society.
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If God is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good, whence evil? If God wills to prevent evil but cannot, then He is not omnipotent. If He can prevent evil but does not, then he is not good. In either case he is not God.
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A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.
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The most pernicious of all taxes are the arbitrary.
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Avarice, or the desire of gain, is a universal passion which operates at all times, at all places, and upon all persons.
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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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There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse.
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Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients: action, pleasure and indolence.
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It affords a violent prejudice against almost every science, that no prudent man, however sure of his principles, dares prophesy concerning any event, or foretell the remote consequences of things.
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Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.
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And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.
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Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, had long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satyrists, and severe moralists.
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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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