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Disbelief in futurity loosens in a great measure the ties of morality, and may be for that reason pernicious to the peace of civil society.

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
Morality
Belief
Loosens
Society
Futurity
Peace
Pernicious
May
Disbelief
Reason
Ties
Great
Civil
Measure

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Grief and disappointment give rise to anger, anger to envy, envy to malice, and malice to grief again, till the whole circle be completed.
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Enthusiasm, being the infirmity of bold and ambitious tempers, is naturally accompanied with a spirit of liberty as superstition,on the contrary, renders men tame and abject, and fits them for slavery.
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As every inquiry which regards religion is of the utmost importance, there are two questions in particular which challenge our attention, to wit, that concerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning it origin in human nature.
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It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.
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Habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the knowledge, and still less to the understanding, of lawful relations.
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Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press.
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Rousseau was mad but influential Hume was sane but had no followers.
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The simplest and most obvious cause which can there be assigned for any phenomena, is probably the true one.
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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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To invent without scruple a new principle to every new phenomenon, instead of adapting it to the old to overload our hypothesis with a variety of this kind, are certain proofs that none of these principles is the just one, and that we only desire, by a number of falsehoods, to cover our ignorance of the truth.
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The chief benefit, which results from philosophy, arises in an indirect manner, and proceeds more from its secret, insensible influence, than from its immediate application.
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I never asserted such an absurd thing as that things arise without a cause.
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The ages of greatest public spirit are not always eminent for private virtue.
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Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.
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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.
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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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Truth springs from argument amongst friends.
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