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Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries.

David Hume

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David Hume
Age: 65 †
Born: 1711
Born: April 26
Died: 1776
Died: August 25
Economist
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Historian
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Philosopher
Writer
Edinburgh
Scotland
David Home
Hume
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Fairies
Never
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That the sun shines tomorrow is a judgement that is as true as the contrary judgement.
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To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential to being a sound, believing Christian.
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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.
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Accuracy is, in every case, advantageous to beauty, and just reasoning to delicate sentiment. In vain would we exalt the one by depreciating the other.
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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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Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.
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Nothing is so improving to the temper as the study of the beauties either of poetry, eloquence, music, or painting.
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A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.
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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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A propensity to hope and joy is real riches one to fear and sorrow real poverty.
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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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[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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The supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit.
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There is nothing, in itself, valuable or despicable, desirable or hateful, beautiful or deformed but that these attributes arise from the particular constitution and fabric of human sentiment and affection.
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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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Vanity is so closely allied to virtue, and to love the fame of laudable actions approaches so near the love of laudable actions for their own sake, that these passions are more capable of mixture than any other kinds of affection and it is almost impossible to have the latter without some degree of the former.
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All power, even the most despotic, rests ultimately on opinion.
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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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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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