Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone, which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past.
David Hume
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Humans
Events
Customs
Great
Principles
Guide
Life
Alone
Similar
Future
Guides
Experience
Useful
Makes
Principle
Renders
Past
Train
Custom
Human
Expect
Appeared
More quotes by David Hume
If God is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good, whence evil? If God wills to prevent evil but cannot, then He is not omnipotent. If He can prevent evil but does not, then he is not good. In either case he is not God.
David Hume
All knowledge resolves itself into probability. ... In every judgment, which we can form concerning probability, as well as concerning knowledge, we ought always to correct the first judgment deriv'd from the nature of the object, by another judgment, deriv'd from the nature of the understanding.
David Hume
Examine the religious principles which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded that they are other than sick men's dreams.
David Hume
It affords a violent prejudice against almost every science, that no prudent man, however sure of his principles, dares prophesy concerning any event, or foretell the remote consequences of things.
David Hume
The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.
David Hume
Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.
David Hume
Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press.
David Hume
There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse.
David Hume
Liberty of any kind is never lost all at once.
David Hume
Methinks I am like a man, who having struck on many shoals, and having narrowly escap'd shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances.
David Hume
Avarice, the spur of industry.
David Hume
The identity that we ascribe to things is only a fictitious one, established by the mind, not a peculiar nature belonging to what we’re talking about.
David Hume
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?
David Hume
Time is a perishable commodity.
David Hume
In the sphere of natural investigation, as in poetry and painting, the delineation of that which appeals most strongly to the imagination, derives its collective interest from the vivid truthfulness with which the individual features are portrayed.
David Hume
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.
David Hume
Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains.
David Hume
The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue.
David Hume
The greatest crimes have been found, in many instances, to be compatible with a superstitious piety and devotion hence it is justly regarded as unsafe to draw any inference in favor of a man's morals, from the fervor or strictness of his religious exercises, even though he himself believe them sincere.
David Hume
It is... a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.
David Hume