35 David Hume Quotes on Life, Inspiration and Passion

David Hume, Original name – David Home – was born on May 7, 1711, in Edinburgh, Scotland; Die on – August 25, 1776. David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist. Even today, he is best known for his significant, influential, and impactful philosophy about empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism.

Starting with his book “A Treatise of Human Nature,” he talked all about the psychological basis of human nature. David David Hume’s philosophical theory spoke about how human beings can gain all the knowledge from the experiences only, and there is no such thing as innate ideas.

Early Life:

David Hume, Original name – David Home – was born on May 7, 1711, in Edinburgh, Scotland; Die on – August 25, 1776. He was the second of his parents’ two sons, Father – Joseph Home and Mother – Katherine Home. His father was an advocate, while his mother was a homemaker. After David turned 2, his father died. His mother never remarried and so had to take care of both the sons on her own.

David Hume had to change his birth name from “Home” to “Hume” because the fact that “Home” in his surname was pronounced as many people in England didn’t acknowledge “Hume.” David never married. He didn’t have a lot of patrimonies to live on, and also, the family was never wealthy. At a very young age, David attended university, probably believed at 10 or 12, when the typical age was 14. In the early years, he wanted to pursue a career in law, but he never did in his words.

He also respected his then professors and teachers. In 1735, while talking to a friend, he stated that – “There is nothing to be learned from a Professor, which is not to be met within Books.” David Hume did not graduate.

Career:

Even after having to belong to the noble Noble ancestry, David Hume did not have a job, a profession, or a field of career at the age of 25. He had no source of income. David had to leave his native town Scotland because he had to work, as commonly as anyone else, under a merchant’s guidance as an assistant. He went to France.

In his early steps to start a university career, he failed because of his alleged atheism. However, later he joined the University of Edinburgh, where he worked as a librarian and got success as a lifetime essayist. He used the library as a valuable resource and gained all the knowledge and expertise in writing. He used the research materials as provided and wrote the massive six-volume “The History of England.” The book became a bestseller and also the standard history of England then.

Here’s a list of ‘David Hume’ quotes we’ve collected below.

David Hume quotes on Life:

“While we are reasoning concerning life, life is gone.”
― David Hume

“The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.”
― David Hume

“No man ever threw away life while it was worth keeping.”
― David Hume

“A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow real poverty.”
― David Hume

“The sweetest path of life leads through the avenues of learning, and whoever can open up the way for another, ought, so far, to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind.”
― David Hume

“Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.”
― David Hume

“When we reflect on the shortness and uncertainty of life, how despicable seem all our pursuits of happiness.”
― David Hume

“Anticipation of pleasure is, in itself, a very considerable pleasure.”
― David Hume

“He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper, but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to his circumstance.”
― David Hume

“It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.”
― David Hume

“Avarice, or the desire of gain, is a universal passion which operates at all times, at all places, and upon all persons.”
― David Hume

“It is possible for the same thing both to be and not to be.”
― David Hume

“The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.”
― David Hume

David Hume Inspirational quotes:

“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.”
― David Hume

“A wise man … proportions his belief to the evidence.”
― David Hume

“What is easy and obvious is never valued; and even what is in itself difficult, if we come to knowledge of it without difficulty, and without and stretch of thought or judgment, is but little regarded.”
― David Hume

“The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.”
― David Hume

“And what is the greatest number? Number one.”
― David Hume

“The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation.”
― David Hume

“The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds.”
― David Hume

“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”
― David Hume

“It is more rational to suspect knavery and folly than to discount, at a stroke, everything that past experience has taught me about the way things actually work.”
― David Hume

David Hume quotes on Passion and Morality:

“Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.”
― David Hume

“Avarice, or the desire of gain, is a universal passion which operates at all times, at all places, and upon all persons.”
― David Hume

“It is an absurdity to believe that the Deity has human passions, and one of the lowest of human passions, a restless appetite for applause.”
― David Hume

“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.”
― David Hume

“Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.”
― David Hume

“The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.”
― David Hume

“Disbelief in futurity loosens in a great measure the ties of morality, and may be for that reason pernicious to the peace of civil society.”
― David Hume

“The end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duty; and, by proper representations of the deformity of vice and beauty of virtue, beget correspondent habits, and engage us to avoid the one, and embrace the other.”
― David Hume

David Hume quotes on Character and Beauty:

“Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.”
― David Hume

“[priests are] the pretenders to power and dominion, and to a superior sanctity of character, distinct from virtue and good morals.”
― David Hume

“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.”
― David Hume

“Barbarity, caprice; these qualities, however nominally disguised, we may universally observe from the ruling character of the deity in all regular religions.”
― David Hume

“The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.”
― David Hume

“Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.”
― David Hume

“If the contemplation, even of inanimate beauty, is so delightful; if it ravishes the senses, even when the fair form is foreign tous: What must be the effects of moral beauty? And what influence must it have, when it embellishes our own mind, and is the result of our own reflection and industry?”
― David Hume

“Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived.”
― David Hume

David Hume is still considered to be one of the most influential people in the world of history. He is recognized as a great human being and a great philosopher of that era. David influenced utilitarianism, logical positivism, the philosophy of science, early analytic philosophy, cognitive science, theology, and many more ideologies and other fields thinkers. He was said to be awakened from his “Dogmatic Slumbers.”

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