Quote

The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.

George Berkeley

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

George Berkeley
Age: 67 †
Born: 1685
Born: March 12
Died: 1753
Died: January 14
Anglican Priest
Epistemologist
Metaphysician
Philosopher
Philosopher Of Science
Writer
Bishop Berkeley
Bishop George Berkeley
Common
Skepticism
Sense
Pursued
Certain
Lead
Back
View
Firsts
Views
First
Principles
Men
Bring
Point

More quotes by George Berkeley

Image
Whatever is immediately perceived is an idea: and can any idea exist out of the mind?
George Berkeley
Image
It is impossible that a man who is false to his friends and neighbours should be true to the public.
George Berkeley
Image
The world is like a board with holes in it, and the square men have got into the round holes, and the round into the square.
George Berkeley
Image
[Christianity] neither enjoins the nastiness of the Cynic, nor the insensibility of the Stoic.
George Berkeley
Image
The table I write on I say exists ... meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it.
George Berkeley
Image
Make a point never go clear, it is great odds that a man whose habits and the bent of whose mind lie a contrary way, shall be unable to comprehend it. So weak a thing is reason in competition with inclination.
George Berkeley
Image
Religion is the centre which unites, and the cement which connects the several parts of members of the political body.
George Berkeley
Image
That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow.
George Berkeley
Image
For my own private satisfaction, I had rather be master of my own time than wear a diadem.
George Berkeley
Image
Many things, for aught I know, may exist, whereof neither I nor any other man hath or can have any idea or notion whatsoever.
George Berkeley
Image
Casting an eye on the education of children, from whence I can make a judgment of my own, I observe they are instructed in religious matters before they can reason about them, and consequently that all such instruction is nothing else but filling the tender mind of a child with prejudices.
George Berkeley
Image
And what are these fluxions? The velocities of evanescent increments. And what are these same evanescent increments? They are neither finite quantities, nor quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the ghosts of departed quantities...?
George Berkeley
Image
The eye by long use comes to see even in the darkest cavern: and there is no subject so obscure but we may discern some glimpse of truth by long poring on it.
George Berkeley
Image
But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park [. . .] and nobody by to perceive them. [...] The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived the trees therefore are in the garden [. . .] no longer than while there is somebody by to perceive them.
George Berkeley
Image
From my own being, and from the dependency I find in myself and my ideas, I do, by an act of reason, necessarily infer the existence of a God, and of all created things in the mind of God.
George Berkeley
Image
Every knave is a thorough knave, and a thorough knave is a knave throughout.
George Berkeley
Image
I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those things I actually see and feel.
George Berkeley
Image
The method of Fluxions is the general key by help whereof the modern mathematicians unlock the secrets of Geometry, and consequently of Nature.
George Berkeley
Image
I had rather be an oyster than a man, the most stupid and senseless of animals.
George Berkeley
Image
God is a being of transcendent and unlimited perfections: his nature therefore is incomprehensible to finite spirits.
George Berkeley