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

More quotes by 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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Whatever is immediately perceived is an idea: and can any idea exist out of the mind?
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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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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I had rather be an oyster than a man, the most stupid and senseless of animals.
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.
George Berkeley
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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
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[Christianity] neither enjoins the nastiness of the Cynic, nor the insensibility of the Stoic.
George Berkeley
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We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.
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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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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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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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 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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For my own private satisfaction, I had rather be master of my own time than wear a diadem.
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
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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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Every knave is a thorough knave, and a thorough knave is a knave throughout.
George Berkeley
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Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few.
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