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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.

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
Humans
Actions
Moralist
Nothing
Morality
Precepts
Take
Rules
Multitude
Would
Influence
Pains
Passion
Multitudes
Inculcate
Pain
Passions
Moralists
Action
Naturally
Abound
Human
Vain
Fruitless

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It is... a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.
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Rousseau was mad but influential Hume was sane but had no followers.
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A propensity to hope and joy is real riches one to fear and sorrow real poverty.
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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.
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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
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Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds on which it is commonly founded.
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What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, that we must thus make it the model of the whole universe? Our partiality in our own favour does indeed present it on all occasions but sound philosophy ought carefully to guard against so natural an illusion.
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The forming of general maxims from particular observation is a very nice operation and nothing is more usual, from haste or a narrowness of mind, which sees not on all sides, than to commit mistakes in this particular.
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Avarice, or the desire of gain, is a universal passion which operates at all times, at all places, and upon all persons.
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Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.
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Everything is sold to skill and labor and where nature furnishes the materials, they are still rude and unfinished, till industry, ever active and intelligent, refines them from their brute state, and fits them for human use and convenience.
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I do not think a philosopher who would apply himself so earnestly to the explaining the ultimate principles of the soul, would show himself a great master in the very science of human nature, which he pretends to explain, or very knowing in what is naturally satisfactory to the mind of man.
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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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When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.
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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 simplest and most obvious cause which can there be assigned for any phenomena, is probably the true one.
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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.
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Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.
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That the corruption of the best thing produces the worst, is grown into a maxim, and is commonly proved, among other instances, by the pernicious effects of superstition and enthusiasm, the corruptions of true religion.
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