David Hume Quotes

Logic is a wonderful invention. It is so wonderful, people often mistake it for reason. Reason, however, requires sense. Logic requires only consistency.

The very essence of rationalism is that it assumes that the reason is the highest faculty in man and the lord of all the rest.

he who thinks great thoughts often makes great errors

Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales

Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.

Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.

Philosophy likes to keen common sense on the run.

Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence.

Everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

First, he must hold rational values, and to do this he must be a thinker.

That which exercises reason is more excellent than that which does not exercise reason

Everything is reason. If you don't have reason, you have nothing.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

I cannot live on myths; somehow, science convinces me more easily. I am prone to lean towards science, ethics, and philosophy rather than myth, religion, and rituals.

I'm a rationalist and a skeptic, someone who safely separates faith from reason.

The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

The great philosophers are poets who believe in the reality of their poems.

Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation or the continuance of his species.

There are those who reason well, but they are greatly outnumbered by those who reason badly.

He who thinks little errs much.

To avoid being drawn into error, keep a firm grip on the truth.

Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.

Abstract truth is the eye of reason.