Thursday, October 9, 2008

David Hume


1. "Among well bred people a mutual deference is affected, contempt for others is disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority."
2. "And what is the greatest number? Number one."
3. "Avarice, the spur of industry."
4. “Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.”
5. "Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals."
6. "Custom, then, is the great guide of human life."
7. "He is happy whom circumstances suit his temper; but he Is more excellent who suits his temper to any circumstance."
8. "Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients; action, pleasure and indolence. And though these ingredients ought to be mixed in different proportions, according to the disposition of the person, yet no one ingredient can be entirely wanting without destroying in some measure the relish of the whole composition. composition."
9. "It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom."
10. "Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few."
11. “Rationally, I can never know that the loaf of bread that nourished me yesterday will nourish me today, hence I can never be rationally motivated to eat.”
12. “The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modelled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the elements and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object of his being.”
13. "The law always limits every power it gives."
14. "The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds."
15. “The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny.”
16. "Where ambition can cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of passions."