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.. the voice of nature and experience seems plainly to oppose the selfish theory.

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
Selfish
Ethics
Morality
Theory
Voice
Experience
Nature
Plainly
Seems
Oppose

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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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It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have preference above the accurate.
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There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.
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The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.
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It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause.
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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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Nothing is so improving to the temper as the study of the beauties either of poetry, eloquence, music, or painting.
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Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
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The great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of scepticism is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life.
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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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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.
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Among the arts of conversation no one pleases more than mutual deference or civility, which leads us to resign our own inclinations to those of our companions, and to curb and conceal that presumption and arrogance so natural to the human mind.
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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.
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The whole [of religion] is a riddle, an ænigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the onlyresult of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject.
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Self-denial is a monkish virtue.
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All inferences from experience... are effects of custom, not of reasoning.
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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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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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Eloquence, when in its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection.
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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.
David Hume