David Hume Quotes

Every man prefers virtue, when there is not some strong incitement to transgress its precepts.

The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization.

Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.

In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine. That is why these rules at first seem to be constantly interfering with our natural inclinations.

Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such a way that pain shall not be inflicted.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Morality is seldom a safe guide for human conduct.

Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.

Tis impossible to judge with much Præcision of the true Motives and Qualities of human Actions, or of the Propriety of Rules contrived to govern them, without considering with like Attention, all the Passions, Appetites, Affections in Nature from which they flow. An intimate Knowledge therefore of the intellectual and moral World is the sole foundation on which a stable structure of Knowledge can be erected.

Morals - all correct moral laws - derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.

Faith teaches that there is a right and wrong beyond mere opinion or desire. Most importantly, it teaches us that freedom is not an end in itself, that how freedom is exercised matters as much as freedom itself

The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning.

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.

Morality represents for everybody a thoroughly definite and ascertained idea: the idea of human conduct regulated in a certain manner.

Everything is useful which contributes to fix the principles and practices of virtue.

Since survival is the sine qua non, I now define the "moral behavior" as "behavior that tends toward survival".

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.

I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly, unless they have a motive to do otherwise.

Men's moral principles are weak enough without their being made subordinate to selfishness; and their selfishness is quite active enough, without any such effort as Christianity makes to constitute it the mainspring of all their conduct.

If you are following the dharma no matter what you do it is moral.

In the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character.

The pulpit only "teaches" to be honest; the market-place "trains" to overreaching and fraud; and teaching has not a tithe of the efficiency of training. Christ never wrote a tract, but He went about doing good.

It is not enough merely possess virtue, as if it were an art; it should be practiced.

My only fear is doing something contrary to human nature - the wrong thing, the wrong way, or at the wrong time.

Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the conversation, and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify our appetites, and aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different.