David Hume
David Hume
David Hume– 25 August 1776) or David Homewas a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of radical philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth7 May 1711
past events morality
It is still open for me, as well as you, to regulate my behavior, by my experience of past events.
past knavery way
It is more rational to suspect knavery and folly than to discount, at a stroke, everything that past experience has taught me about the way things actually work
past words-of-wisdom kind
The supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit.
memories past words-of-wisdom
..all arguments concerning existence are founded on the relation of cause and effect; that our knowledge of that relation is derived entirely from experience; and all our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition that the future will be conformable to the past. .... Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses.
past joy mind
...virtue is attended by more peace of mind than vice, and meets with a more favourable reception from the world. I am sensible, that, according to the past experience of mankind, friendship is the chief joy of human life and moderation the only source of tranquillity and happiness.
past giving useless
If ... the past may be no Rule for the future, all Experience becomes useless and can give rise to no Inferences or Conclusions.
past ideas giving
To consider the matter aright, reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas, and endows them with particular qualities, according to their particular situations and relations. This instinct, 'tis true, arises from past observation and experience; but can anyone give the ultimate reason, why past experience and observation produces such an effect, any more than why nature alone should produce it?
science past imagination
We have no other notion of cause and effect, but that of certain objects, which have always conjoin'd together, and which in all past instances have been found inseparable. We cannot penetrate into the reason of the conjunction. We only observe the thing itself, and always find that from the constant conjunction the objects acquire an union in the imagination.
past experience events
Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone, which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past.
past mirrors faithful
When we reflect on our past sentiments and affections, our thought is a faithful mirror, and copies its objects truly; but the colours which it employs are faint and dull, in comparison of those in which our original perceptions were clothed.
incapable poor principles
The slaving poor are incapable of any principles
avenues either esteemed leads life mankind open path remove science sweetest whoever
The sweetest and most inoffensive path of life leads through the avenues of science and learning; and whoever can either remove any obstruction in this way, or open up any new prospect, ought, so far, to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind
custom great guide human
Custom, then, is the great guide of human life.
affairs appears consider ease few governed human surprising
Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the ease with which the many are governed by the few