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It is more rational to suspect knavery and folly than to discount, at a stroke, everything that past experience has taught me about the way things actually work

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
Librarian
Philosopher
Writer
Edinburgh
Scotland
David Home
Hume
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Way
Folly
Things
Rational
Knavery
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Discount
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Experience
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Past
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Everything
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More quotes by David Hume

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All this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us the by senses and experience.
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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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Fine writing, according to Mr. Addison, consists of sentiments which are natural without being obvious.
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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 Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.
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But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life because that has never been observed in any age or country.
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In ancient times, bodily strength and dexterity, being of greater use and importance in war, was also much more esteemed and valued, than at present. ... In short, the different ranks of men are, in a great measure, regulated by riches.
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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.
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It is... a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.
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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.
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Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients action, pleasure and indolence. And though these ingredients ought to be mixed in different proportions, according to the disposition of the person, yet no one ingredient can be entirely wanting without destroying in some measure the relish of the whole composition.
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A man posing for a painting.
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We need only reflect on what has been prov'd at large, that we are never sensible of any connexion betwixt causes and effects, and that 'tis only by our experience of their constant conjunction, we can arrive at any knowledge of this relation.
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Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived.
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It seems to me, that the only Objects of the abstract Sciences or of Demonstration is Quantity and Number, and that all Attempts to extend this more perfect Species of Knowledge beyond these Bounds are mere Sophistry and Illusion.
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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's when we start working together that the real healing takes place... it's when we start spilling our sweat, and not our blood.
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What praise is implied in the simple epithet useful! What reproach in the contrary.
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Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.
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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