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What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.

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
Philosophical
Spiritual
Science
Matter
Mind
Never

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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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.
George Berkeley
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The love of truth, virtue, and the happiness of mankind are specious pretexts, but not the inward principles that set divines at work else why should they affect to abuse human reason, to disparage natural religion, to traduce the philosophers as they universally do?
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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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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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
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God is a being of transcendent and unlimited perfections: his nature therefore is incomprehensible to finite spirits.
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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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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For my own private satisfaction, I had rather be master of my own time than wear a diadem.
George Berkeley
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That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow.
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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Doth the Reality of sensible things consist in being perceived? or, is it something distinct from their being perceived, and that bears no relation to the mind?
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 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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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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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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I had rather be an oyster than a man, the most stupid and senseless of animals.
George Berkeley
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Whatever is immediately perceived is an idea: and can any idea exist out of the mind?
George Berkeley
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He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.
George Berkeley