David Hume Quotes

I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam - good people, yes, but any religion based on a single...

Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds... is not productive.

The public use of a man's reason must be free at all times…. But I hear people clamor on all sides: Don't argue! The military officer says: Don't argue, drill! The tax collector: Don't argue, pay! The minister: Don't argue, believe!

God hath made of one blood all nations of men.

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.

The Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs have light blue eyes and red hair.

When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it.

Faith accepts no commands. It accepts only what comes to it by way of reasoned conviction.

There are in America from fifteen to twenty million religious fundamentalists who are dedicated to doctrines incompatible with democracy in that they insist on their prerogatives as first principles. An even larger group feebly follows the trail of fire breathed by those fundamentalists. They are the most dangerous minority we have because they categorically eschew the reasoned judgments of the majority. Democracy properly allows them the right to worship as they choose. It should never have conceded them the right to establish schools. Education is not a function of any church—-or even of a city—-or a state; it is a function of all mankind.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

Reason, in fact, is a thing of God, inasmuch as there is nothing which God the Maker of all has not provided, disposed, ordained by reason.

Poverty, and material and moral misery, are everywhere. There is little to cheer us. Unfortunately, this is the true state of the country. It’s not our fault: unthinking rulers, ignorant of the way of the world, have run this country for years, not to say centuries, and reduced a paradise to this sorry state. Most of our officials are inexperienced and at a loss. Our poor people have ability, but they have fallen under the influence of superstitions which have been presented as sacred dogma.

Those who have no sense of right, reason or religion, have a natural propensity to make use of their strength to the destruction of such as are weaker than they.

If you find the light of Scripture clearer than the light of reason (which also is given us by divine wisdom), you are doubtless right in your own conscience in making your reason yield. For my part, since I plainly confess that I do not understand the Scriptures, though I have spent many years upon them, and since I know that when once I have a firm proof I cannot by any course of thought come to doubt of it, I rest wholly upon that which my understanding commends to me, without any suspicion that I am deceived therein, or that the Scriptures, even though I do not search them, can speak against it. For one truth cannot conflict with another.

My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.

Next to the commodities of corruption, and religion, however, Nigeria is the world capital of rumour mongering.

Christianity believes that God has created an external world that is really there; and because He is a reasonable God, one can expect to be able to find the order of the universe by reason.

This seems to be advanced as the surest basis for our belief in the existence of gods, that there is no race so uncivilized, no one in the world so barbarous that his mind has no inkling of a belief in gods.

In Deism our reason and our belief are happily united.

To get any reason out of the mass of incongruity we call human life, we have to transcend our reason, but we must do it scientifically, slowly, by regular practice, and we must cast off all superstition.

The world of reason is to be regarded as a great and immortal being, who ceaselessly works out what is necessary, and so makes himself lord also over what is accidental.

We do not destroy religion by destroying superstition.

True religion being the greatest thing in life and in the world, has been exploited the most.

The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and the third of reason.

"You ought to be ashamed," a woman in an Easter bonnet told Stein. "Your race gave us our religion..." "From ancient polytheism, the belief in lots of gods," the woman continued a little more eruditely, "the Hebrew nation led us on to the idea that there is only one." "Which is just a step from the truth," said Stein.