David Hume Quotes

Normal social behavior requires that we be able to recognize identities in spite of change. Unless we can do so, there can be no human society as we know it.

If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.

In history, the moments during which reason and reconciliation prevail are short and fleeting.

The interest which lay behind Federalism was that of well-to-do citizens in a stable political and social order, and this interest aroused them to favor and to seek some form of political organization which was capable of protecting their property and promoting its interest.

A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants.

In the East, the main object is to have a well-ordered society so that everybody can have maximum enjoyment of his freedoms. This freedom can only exist in an ordered state and not in a natural state of contention and anarchy.

It is the Band which unites the Interests of Individuals; it secures to them their respective Rights, and preserves them from Injuries; it is the Source of numberless Blessings, which are interrupted, or wholly vanish, the Moment it is disturbed.

It will give satisfaction to the people; and be a happy means, under providence, of preventing popular commotions, mobs, bloodshed and civil war.

The great and chief end, therefore, of men uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property

Tis property that makes government necessary and the immediate end to government is to preserve property; where therefore a government, instead of preserving, entirely ruins the property of the subject. That government dissolves itself.

While we must, by all available means, prevent the overthrow of the government, we should avoid planting and cultivating too many thorns in the bosom of society.

The experience of ages demonstrates, that regularity of manners is essential to the tranquility and prosperity of societies.

Without law, without the social stability it provides, there can't be contracts and deals, there can't be chamber meetings, there can't be good jobs and safe families.

Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence.

The continued existence of society depends upon private property.

If any country were indeed filled with men, each thus diligently discharging the duties of his own station without breaking in upon the rights of others, but on the contrary endeavoring, so far as he might be able, to forward their views and promote their happiness, all would be active and harmonious in the goodly frame of human society.

The world will never be in any manner of order or tranquility until men are firmly convinced that conscience, honor and credit are all in one interest

Equality of possessions is no doubt right, but, as men could not make might obey right, they have made right obey might.

All society is held together by nonviolence even as the earth is held in her position by gravitation.

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself.

I cannot say that I don't disagree with you.

The laws would not prevent each man from living according to his inclination, unless individuals harmed each other; for envy creates the beginning of strife.

The means employed by Nature to bring about the development of all the capacities of men is their antagonism in society, so far as this is, in the end, the cause of a lawful order among men.

The ultimate foundation of a free society is the binding tie of cohesive sentiment.

The difference between a stable society and an unstable one is that the restraints in an unstable one are external. In a stable society government ultimately becomes unnecessary; the restraints on people's actions are internal, they're self-disciplined.