Quote

What is easy and obvious is never valued and even what is in itself difficult, if we come to knowledge of it without difficulty, and without and stretch of thought or judgment, is but little regarded.

David Hume

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Come
Motivation
Without
Judgment
Even
Knowledge
Never
Difficult
Valued
Easy
Stretch
Thought
Regarded
Littles
Difficulty
Little
Obvious

More quotes by David Hume

Image
Rousseau was mad but influential Hume was sane but had no followers.
David Hume
Image
All morality depends upon our sentiments and when any action or quality of the mind pleases us after a certain manner we say it is virtuous and when the neglect or nonperformance of it displeases us after a like manner, we say that we lie under an obligation to perform it.
David Hume
Image
But to proceed in this reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity the most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science.
David Hume
Image
Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds on which it is commonly founded.
David Hume
Image
God is an ever-present spirit guiding all that happens to a wise and holy end.
David Hume
Image
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
Image
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.
David Hume
Image
It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have preference above the accurate.
David Hume
Image
Truth springs from argument amongst friends.
David Hume
Image
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.
David Hume
Image
The end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duty and, by proper representations of the deformity of vice and beauty of virtue, beget correspondent habits, and engage us to avoid the one, and embrace the other.
David Hume
Image
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
David Hume
Image
I cannot but bless the memory of Julius Caesar, for the great esteem he expressed for fat men and his aversion to lean ones.
David Hume
Image
Fine writing, according to Mr. Addison, consists of sentiments which are natural without being obvious.
David Hume
Image
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.
David Hume
Image
Eloquence, when in its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection.
David Hume
Image
It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause for this may be done by one great or wise action in an age. But to escape censure a man must pass his whole life without saying or doing one ill or foolish thing
David Hume
Image
Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man.
David Hume
Image
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.
David Hume
Image
Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.
David Hume