About David Hume: David Hume is best known today for his highly influential system of radical philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism.
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.
Epicurus's old questions are still unanswered: Is he (God) willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? then whence evil?
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.
It is an absurdity to believe that the Deity has human passions, and one of the lowest of human passions, a restless appetite for applause
A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience as can be imagined.
When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived or that the fact which he relates should really have happened. I weigh ...
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. …'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.
While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy, so agreeable to the natural vanity and curiosity of men; and thereby restored her ultimate secre...
Liberty of any kind is never lost all at once.
[I]f subjects must never resist, it follows that every prince, without any effort, policy, or violence, is at once rendered absolute and uncontrollable;
Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profitable for us both, that I should labour with you today, and that you should aid me tomorrow. I have no kindness for you, and know you have as little for me. I will not, therefore, take any ...
Truth springs from argument amongst friends.
Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.
Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.
Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.
There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.
The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.
Men often act knowingly against their interest.
Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.
The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.
