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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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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
Write
Thereby
Spirit
Table
Doe
Perceive
Might
Tables
Writing
Exists
Meaning
Study
Actually

More quotes by 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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Whatever is immediately perceived is an idea: and can any idea exist out of 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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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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He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.
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 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.
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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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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Every knave is a thorough knave, and a thorough knave is a knave throughout.
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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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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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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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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Religion is the centre which unites, and the cement which connects the several parts of members of the political body.
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 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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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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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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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