David Hume Quotes

If the majority of people were right, we'd be living in paradise. But we are not living in paradise, we are living in hell. What does it mean? That means the majority of people are wrong. So I never believed what people told me.

It does not prove a thing to be right because the majority say it is so.

I've always been suspicious of collective truths.

Everything popular is wrong.

Majorities are generally wrong, if only in their reasons for being right.

To think truly is noble and to be deceived is base.

. . .the larger the crowd, the more probable that that which it praises is folly, and the more improbable that it is truth; and the most improbable of all that it is any eternal truth.

Wide acceptance of an idea is not proof of its validity.

My dear, the real truth always sounds improbable, do you know that? To make truth sound probable you must always mix in some falsehood with it. Men have always done so.

Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.

Why can you believe the lie, but not the truth?

Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.

If somebody tells you an obviously untrue story, on the Continent you would remark, "You are a liar, Sir, and a rather dirty one at that." In England you just say "Oh, is that so?" Or "That's rather an unusual story, isn't it?

I seek the truth...it is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance that does harm.

A friend once said, and I found to be true,That everyday people, they lie to God too,So what makes you think, that they won't lie to you.

It is difficult to say what truth is, but sometimes it is so easy to recognize a falsehood.

We should be similarly wary of accepting common opinions; we should judge them by the ways of reason not by popular vote.

If you can't prove it's not true then a certain number of people will glom on and say it is true.

Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.

Their [the Skeptics'] way of speaking is: "I settle nothing. . . . I do not understand it. . . . Nothing seems true that may not seem false." Their sacramental word is . . . , which is to say, I suspend my judgment.

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.

If we attach more importance to what other people believe than to what we know to be true - if we value belonging over being - we will not attain authenticity.

...most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.

Are we willing to do for the truth what others are willing to do for a lie?

The average man's opinions are much less foolish than they would be if he thought for himself.