"And indeed nothing but the most determined scepticism,……" — David Hume
"And indeed nothing but the most determined scepticism, along with a great degree of indolence, can justify this aversion to metaphysics. For if truth be at all within the reach of human capacity, it is certain it must lie very deep and abstruse: and to hope we shall arrive at it without pains, while the greatest geniuses have failed with the utmost pains, must certainly be esteemed sufficiently vain and presumptuous. I pretend to no such advantage in the philosophy I am going to unfold, and would esteem it a strong presumption against it, were it so very easy and obvious."
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David Hume
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216 Quotes by David Hume
David Hume has 216 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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All the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and...however wide any of them may seem to…
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Where ambition can cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most…
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Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profitable for us both, that I should labour with…
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Your corn is ripe today, mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profitable for us both that I should labor with…
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Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious…
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I do not have enough faith to believe there is no god.
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God is an ever-present spirit guiding all that happens to a wise and holy end.
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Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude.
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The many instances of forged miracles, and prophecies, and supernatural events, which, in all ages, have either been detected by…
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All this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing…
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To consider the matter aright, reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us…
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Tis evident that all reasonings concerning matter of fact are founded on the relation of cause and effect, and that…
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More Abstruse Quotes
This quote is filed under Abstruse Quotes,
one of 17 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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Mathematics is an obscure field, an abstruse science, complicated and exact; yet so many have attained perfection in it that…
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Nature . . . is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, nor cares a whit…
— Galileo Galilei
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If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim…
— Mark Twain
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Omit a few of the most abstruse sciences, and mankind's study of man occupies nearly the whole field of literature.…
— Unknown Author
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Often when religious leaders come together, they talk about a particular sexual ethic, or an abstruse doctrine, as though this,…
— Karen Armstrong
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The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the…
— Samuel Johnson
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Mathematics is ordinarily considered as producing precise and dependable results; but in the stock market the more elaborate and abstruse…
— Benjamin Graham
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Should a priest reject relativity because it contains no authoritative exposition on the doctrine of the Trinity? Once you realize…
— Georges Lemaitre
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I find no quality so easy for a man to counterfeit as devotion, though his life and manner are not…
— Michel de Montaigne
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For poets today or in any age, the choice is not between freedom on the one hand and abstruse French…
— James Fenton
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It is very pious to say and prudent to affirm that the holy Bible can never speak untruth -- whenever…
— Galileo Galilei
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There are greater depths and obscurities, greater intricacies and perplexities, in an elaborate and well-written piece of nonsense, than in…
— Joseph Addison
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