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It is... a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.

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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Edinburgh
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More quotes by David Hume

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The religious hypothesis, therefore, must be considered only as a particular method of accounting for the visible phenomena of the universe: but no just reasoner will ever presume to infer from it any single fact, and alter or add to the phenomena, in any single particular.
David Hume
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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.
David Hume
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The greater part of mankind may be divided into two classes that of shallow thinkers who fall short of the truth and that of abstruse thinkers who go beyond it.
David Hume
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Municipal laws are a supply to the wisdom of each individual and, at the same time, by restraining the natural liberty of men, make private interest submit to the interest of the public.
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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.
David Hume
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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.
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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..when, in my philosophical disquisitions, I deny a providence and a future state, I undermine not the foundations of society, but advance principles, which they themselves, upon their own topics, if they argue consistently, must allow to be solid and satisfactory.
David Hume
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There is, indeed a more mitigated scepticism or academical philosophy, which may be both durable and useful, and which may, in part, be the result of this Pyrrhonism, or excessive scepticism, when its undistinguished doubts are corrected by common sense and reflection.
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
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It is seldom, that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom, that it must steal upon them by degrees, and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes, in order to be received.
David Hume
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Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients: action, pleasure and indolence.
David Hume
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Every disastrous accident alarms us, and sets us on enquiries concerning the principles whence it arose: Apprehensions spring up with regard to futurity: And the mind, sunk into diffidence, terror, and melancholy, has recourse to every method of appeasing those secret intelligent powers, on whom our fortune is supposed entirely to depend.
David Hume
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I never asserted such an absurd thing as that things arise without a cause.
David Hume
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To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see all this is nothing but to perceive.
David Hume
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It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause.
David Hume
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The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation.
David Hume
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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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It is an absurdity to believe that the Deity has human passions, and one of the lowest of human passions, a restless appetite for applause
David Hume
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The greatest crimes have been found, in many instances, to be compatible with a superstitious piety and devotion hence it is justly regarded as unsafe to draw any inference in favor of a man's morals, from the fervor or strictness of his religious exercises, even though he himself believe them sincere.
David Hume