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Westward the course of empire takes its way The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day: Time's noblest offspring is the last.

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
Lasts
Drama
Last
Close
Westward
Past
Already
Noblest
Firsts
Shall
Offspring
First
Takes
Fifth
Way
Courses
Empire
Time
Course
Empires
Four
Acts

More quotes by 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.
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God is a being of transcendent and unlimited perfections: his nature therefore is incomprehensible to finite spirits.
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For my own private satisfaction, I had rather be master of my own time than wear a diadem.
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[Tar water] is of a nature so mild and benign and proportioned to the human constitution, as to warm without heating, to cheer but not inebriate.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The fawning courtier and the surly squire often mean the same thing,--each his own interest.
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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.
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Whatever is immediately perceived is an idea: and can any idea exist out of the mind?
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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.
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What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.
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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.
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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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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?
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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.
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We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.
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All those who write either explicitly or by insinuation against the dignity, freedom, and immortality of the human soul, may so far forth be justly said to unhinge the principles of morality, and destroy the means of making men reasonably virtuous.
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.
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It is impossible that a man who is false to his friends and neighbours should be true to the public.
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