David Hume Quotes

As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.

All men therefore among themselves are by nature equal; the inequality we now discern, hath its spring from the Civil Law.

No one has yet been found resolute enough in dogmatizing to deny that Nature made man equal; that society has destroyed this equality is a truth not more incontrovertible.

All men are, by nature, equal and free: No one has the right to any authority over another without his consent: All lawful government is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it: Such consent was given with a view to ensure the happiness of the governed.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother.

Nature has made men free and equal. The distinctions necessary for social order are only founded on general utility.

We are a naturally hierarchical species.

'Tis hard to comprehend how one man can come to be master of many, equal to himself in right, unless it be by consent or by force.

All men are created equal, it is only men themselves who place themselves above equality.

Politician: An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared.

Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of the body and mind, as that, though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together the difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he.

The philosophers, who have inquired into the foundations of society, have all felt the necessity of going back to a state of nature; but not one of them has got there.

Every man alive in the world is a beggar of one sort or another, every last one of them, great and small. The priest begs God for grace, and the king begs something for something. Sometimes he begs the people for loyalty, sometimes he begs God to forgive him

Order is Heaven's first law, and this confessed, Some are, and must be greater than the rest -

The mind is lowered through association with inferiors. With equals it attains equality; and with superiors, superiority.

Any organized social group is always a stratified social body. There has not been and does not exist any permanent social group which is "flat" and in which all members are equal.

Western democracy included individual liberty, as well as equality. The frontiersman was impatient of restraints. He knew how to preserve order, even in the absence of legal authority…. the individual was not ready to submit to complex regulations. Population was sparse, there was no multitude of jostling interests, as in older settlements, demanding an elaborate system of personal restraints. Society became atomic. There was a reproduction of the primitive idea of the personality of the law, a crime was more an offense against the victim than a violation of the law of the land.

Remember, that they are of as good a kind as you; that is, they are reasonable creatures as well as you, and born to as much natural liberty. If their sin have enslaved them to you, yet Nature made them your equals.

All men are born free: just not for long.

Where equality is undisputed, so also is subordination.

The typical white intellectual considers himself superior to ordinary white people for two contradictory reasons: a) he constantly proclaims belief in human equality, but they don't ; b) he has a high IQ, but they don't.

Man is not made for society, but society is made for man.

No one enjoys being equal.

God made you and me, in certain respects, quite unequal, and it would be futile to try any interference with His arrangements.