"If we take in our hand any volume;……" — David Hume
"If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."
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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 Abstract Quotes
This quote is filed under Abstract Quotes,
one of 741 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.
— Honore de Balzac
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I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I'd draw a big ram's head, really…
— Jean-Michel Basquiat
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In the abstract conception of universal wrong, all concrete responsibility vanishes.
— Theodor Adorno
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None of the abstract concepts comes closer to fulfilled utopia than that of eternal peace.
— Theodor Adorno
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Good science fiction is intelligent. It asks big questions that are on people's minds. It's not impossible. It has some…
— Nicolas Cage
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Science fiction is a way that I can go into the abstract, go into the imagination, and audiences are still…
— Nicolas Cage
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I am searching for abstract ways of expressing reality, abstract forms that will enlighten my own mystery.
— Eric Cantona
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Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
— Al Capp
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Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change…
— Saul Alinsky
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'Woman on the Plaza,' with its distinct horizon, snow-like surfaces, wintry wall, stunning sunlight, sharp shadows, and hurrying figure, would…
— Sam Abell
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Old ideas give way slowly; for they are more than abstract logical forms and categories. They are habits, predispositions, deeply…
— John Dewey
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It is difficult to talk about fashion in the abstract, without a human body before my eyes, without drawings, without…
— Giorgio Armani
See all 741 Abstract Quotes »