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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

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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
Exist
Idea
May
Whereof
Ideas
Aught
Many
Whatsoever
Things
Hath
Men
Notion
Neither

More quotes by George Berkeley

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Certainly he who can digest a second or third fluxion need not, methinks, be squeamish about any point in divinity.
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.
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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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The method of Fluxions is the general key by help whereof the modern mathematicians unlock the secrets of Geometry, and consequently of Nature.
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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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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
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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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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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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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The fawning courtier and the surly squire often mean the same thing,--each his own interest.
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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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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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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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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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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We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.
George Berkeley
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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.
George Berkeley
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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
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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