David Hume Quotes

It can't be Nature, for it is not sense.

Intuition does not in itself amount to knowledge, yet cannot be disregarded by philosophers and psychologists.

Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to believe in what they understand.

What the heart knows today the head will understand tomorrow.

Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.

It is not rational to assume, without evidence, that rationality can disclose everything about the world, just because it can disclose some things. Our intuition in favour of rationality, where we are inclined to use it, is just that - an intuition. Reason is founded in intuition and ends in intuition, like a pair of massive bookends.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

Pythagoras took the next important step by subordinating the mere matter of nature to its essential principle of form and order, identifying the latter with reason or the soul.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

Our reason arises, at the very least, from this twofold lesson of sensuous revelations and human testimonies.

Faith is a higher faculty than reason.

What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct.

Logic is no answer to passion.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

Reason enables us to get around in the world of ideas, but cannot prescribe our thoughts.

The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.

Convictions do not imply reasons.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind

When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it.

Faith feels itself secure neither with universal consent, nor with tradition, nor with authority. It seeks support of its enemy, reason.

Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason

The wise are instructed by reason; ordinary minds by experience; the stupid, by necessity; and brutes by instinct.

That which exercises reason is more excellent than that which does not exercise reason