David Hume Quotes
Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue. Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected. I have written on all sorts of subjects... yet I have no enemies; except indeed all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians. It is a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave. It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom. It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. It's when we start working together that the real healing takes place... it's when we start spilling our sweat, and not our blood. Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions. Men often act knowingly against their interest. No advantages in this world are pure and unmixed. No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish. Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence. Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few. Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge. That the sun will not rise to-morrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise. The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue. The chief benefit, which results from philosophy, arises in an indirect manner, and proceeds more from its secret, insensible influence, than from its immediate application.
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