Quotes from David Hume

All free governments must consist of two councils, a lesser and greater; or, in other words, of a senate and people. The people . . . would want wisdom, without the senate: The Senate, without the people, would want honestly.

So great is the force of laws, and of particular forms of government, and so little dependence have they on the humors and tempers of men, that consequences almost as general and certain may sometimes be deduced from them, as any which the mathematical sciences afford us. . . . It may . . . be pronounced as an universal axiom in politics, That an hereditary prince, a nobility without vassals, and a people voting by their representatives, form the best monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.

L]iberty is the perfection of civil society; but still authority must be acknowledged essential to its very existence...

The most perfect happiness, surely, must arise from the contemplation of the most perfect object.

Democracies are turbulent. . . . Aristocracies are better adapted for peace and order, and accordingly were most admired by ancient writers; but they are jealous and oppressive.

It is as easy for the imagination to form monsters and to join incongruous shapes and appearances as it is to conceive the most natural and familiar objects.

All free governments must consist of two councils, a lesser and greater; or, in other words, of a senate and people. The people . . . would want wisdom, without the senate: The Senate, without the people, would want honesty.

In our reasonings concerning fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance. A wise man therefore proportions his belief to the evidence.

In all societies people depend so much on one another that hardly any human action is entirely complete in itself, or is performed without some reference to the actions of others that are needed if the action is to produce what the agent intends.

The face of the earth is continually changing, by the encrease of small kingdoms into great empires, by the dissolution of great empires into smaller kingdoms, by the planting of colonies, by the migration of tribes. Is there any thing discoverable in all these events, but force and violence? Where is the mutual agreement or voluntary association so much talked of?

It is impossible for us to think of any thing, which we have not antecedently felt, either by our external or internal senses.

Belief doesn't consists in any special nature or order of ideas ·because the imagination has no limits with respect to those·, but rather in the manner of their conception and in their feeling to the mind. [...] In philosophy we can go no further than to assert that belief is something felt by the mind that distinguishes the ideas of the judgment from the fictions of the imagination.

Nada es tan cierto como que los hombres se guían en gran medida por el interés y que aun cuando se preocupan por algo que trasciende de ellos mismos no llegan muy lejos;

No existe cualidad de la naturaleza humana que cause errores más fatales en nuestra conducta que la que nos lleva a preferir lo que es presente a lo distante y lo remoto y nos hace desear los objetos más por su situación que por su valor intrínseco.

When I look abroad, I foresee on every side dispute, contradiction, anger, calummy, and detraction, When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance (Hume, 1739, p.312)

When I look abroad, I foresee on every side, dispute, contradiction, anger, calumny and detraction. When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. All the world conspires to oppose and contradict me; tho' such is my weakness, that I feel all my opinions loosen and fall of themselves, when unsupported by the approbation of others. Every step I take is with hesitation, and every new reflection makes me dread an error and absurdity in my reasoning.

I am first affrighted and confounded with that forelorn solitude, in which I am plac'd in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expell'd all human commerce, and left utterly abandon'd and disconsolate. Fain wou'd I run into the crowd for shelter and warmth; but cannot prevail with myself to mix with such deformity.

I am first affrighted and confounded with that forelorn solitude, in which I am plac'd in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expell'd all human commerce, and left utterly abandon'd and disconsolate (Hume, 1739, p. 312).

The rules of morality. therefore, are not conclusions of our reason. No one, I believe, will deny the justness of this inference; nor is there any other means of evading it, than by denying that principle, on which it is founded.

I am first affrighted and confounded with that forelorn solitude, in which I am plac'd in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expell'd all human commerce, and left utterly abandon'd and disconsolate (Hume, 1739, p. 311-312).

Nada cierto podemos afirmar del mundo objetivo y del sujeto que lo mira, salvo que uno y otro son haces de percepciones instantáneas e inconexas ligadas por la memoria y la imaginación.

There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse.

en asuntos de religión los hombres encuentran placer en ser aterrorizados y que no hay predicadores más populares que los que excitan la mayor tristeza y las pasiones más tétricas.

Todas las opiniones y nociones de las cosas a las que hemos sido habituados desde nuestra infancia arraigan tan profundamente que es imposible para nosotros, mediante todo el poder de la razón y experiencia, desarraigarlas, y este hábito no sólo se acerca en su influencia, sino que a veces supera al que surge de la constante unión inseparable de las causas y efectos.