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It is still open for me, as well as you, to regulate my behavior, by my experience of past events.

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
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More quotes by David Hume

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No quality of human nature is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however different from, or even contrary to our own.
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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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It seems certain, that though a man, in a flush of humour, after intense reflection on the many contradictions and imperfections of human reason, may entirely renounce all belief and opinion, it is impossible for him to persevere in this total scepticism, or make it appear in his conduct for a few hours.
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Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man.
David Hume
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Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.
David Hume
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Everything in the world is purchased by labor.
David Hume
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The ages of greatest public spirit are not always eminent for private virtue.
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He is happy whom circumstances suit his temper but he Is more excellent who suits his temper to any circumstance.
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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.
David Hume
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Almost every one has a predominant inclination, to which his other desires and affections submit, and which governs him, though perhaps with some intervals, though the whole course of his life.
David Hume
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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.
David Hume
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A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.
David Hume
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While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain.
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All power, even the most despotic, rests ultimately on opinion.
David Hume
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That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise.
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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There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.
David Hume
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He sees such a desperate rapaciousness prevail such a disregard to equity, such contempt of order, such stupid blindness to future consequences, as must immediately have the most tragical conclusion, and most terminate in destruction to the greater number, and in a total dissolution of society to the rest.
David Hume
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If morality had naturally no influence on human passions and actions, it were in vain to take such pains to inculcate it and nothing would be more fruitless than that multitude of rules and precepts with which all moralists abound.
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Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press.
David Hume