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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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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
Flow
Participated
Beings
Succession
Simple
Flows
Idea
Frame
Lost
Difficulties
Ideas
Attempt
Inextricable
Mind
Whenever
Abstracted
Time
Difficulty
Uniformly

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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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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.
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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!
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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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[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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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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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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I had rather be an oyster than a man, the most stupid and senseless of animals.
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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.
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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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He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.
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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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Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few.
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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.
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We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.
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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?
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Every knave is a thorough knave, and a thorough knave is a knave throughout.
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...?
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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.
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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