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I had rather be an oyster than a man, the most stupid and senseless of animals.

George Berkeley

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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
Animals
Stupid
Animal
Rather
Oyster
Men
Senseless
Oysters
Stupidity
Silly

More quotes by George Berkeley

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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
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If we admit a thing so extraordinary as the creation of this world, it should seem that we admit something strange, and odd, and new to human apprehension, beyond any other miracle whatsoever.
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Whenever I attempt to frame a simple idea of time, abstracted from the succession of ideas in my mind, which flows uniformly, and is participated by all beings, I am lost and embrangled in inextricable difficulties.
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There being in the make of an English mind a certain gloom and eagerness, which carries to the sad extreme religion to fanaticism free-thinking to atheism liberty to rebellion.
George Berkeley
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It is impossible that a man who is false to his friends and neighbours should be true to the public.
George Berkeley
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We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.
George Berkeley
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Upon the whole, I am inclined to think that the far greater part, if not all, of those difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers, and blocked up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to our selves. That we have first raised a dust, and then complain, we cannot see.
George Berkeley
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What doubts, what hypotheses, what labyrinths of amusement, what fields of disputation, what an ocean of false learning, may be avoided by that single notion of immaterialism!
George Berkeley
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To be is to be perceived (Esse est percipi). Or, If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
George Berkeley
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The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.
George Berkeley
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That thing of hell and eternal punishment is the most absurd, as well as the most disagreeable thought that ever entered into the head of mortal man.
George Berkeley
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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
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I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those things I actually see and feel.
George Berkeley
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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
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[Christianity] neither enjoins the nastiness of the Cynic, nor the insensibility of the Stoic.
George Berkeley
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Every knave is a thorough knave, and a thorough knave is a knave throughout.
George Berkeley
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For my own private satisfaction, I had rather be master of my own time than wear a diadem.
George Berkeley
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To me it seems that liberty and virtue were made for each other. If any man wish to enslave his country, nothing is a fitter preparative than vice and nothing leads to vice so surely as irreligion.
George Berkeley
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All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth - in a word, all those bodies which compose the frame of the world - have not any subsistence without a mind.
George Berkeley
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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