Quotes from George Berkeley

Suppose now one of your hands hot, and the other cold, and that they are both at once put into the same vessel of water, in an intermediate state, will not the water seem cold to one hand, and warm to the other?

My inference will be that you mean nothing at all. That you employ words to no manner or purpose without any design or signification whatsoever. And I leave it to you to consider how mere jargon should be treated.

T]he communicating of ideas marked by words is not the chief and only end of language, as is commonly supposed.

What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.

I give up the point for the present, reserving still a right to detract my opinion in case I shall hereafter discover any false step in my progress to it.

A ray of imagination or of wisdom may enlighten the universe, and glow into remotest centuries.

Esse est percipi.

THE SECOND DIALOGUE

Few men think; yet all have opinions

IT IS A HARD THING TO SUPPOSE THAT RIGHT DEDUCTIONS FROM TRUE PRINCIPLES SHOULD EVER END IN CONSEQUENCES WHICH CANNOT BE MAINTAINED or made consistent

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.

For my own private satisfaction, I had rather be master of my own time than wear a diadem.

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.

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?

Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few.

Principles early sown in the mind, are the seeds which produce fruit and harvest in the ripe state of manhood.

Atheism ... that bugbear of women and fools ... is the very top and perfection of free-thinking. It is the grand arcanum to which a true genius naturally riseth, by a certain climax or gradation of thought, and without which he can never possess his soul in absolute liberty and repose.

Pull a state to pieces, jumble, confound, and shake together the particles of human society, and then let them stand awhile, and you shall see them settle of themselves in some convenient order, where heavy heads are lowest, and men of genius uppermost.

Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward pretence to it but the free-thinker alone is truly free.

For no one's authority ought to rank so high as to set a value on his words and terms even though nothing clear and determinate lies behind them.

The error of a lively rake lies in his passions, and may be reformed: but the dry rogue, who sets up for judgment, is incorrigible.

The same principles which at first view lead to scepticism, pursued to a certain point bring men back to common sense.

He who saith there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.

Believe me, the world always was, and always will be the same, as long as men are men.