David Hume Quotes

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.

I have steadily endeavoured to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it.

Science is a wonderful way of getting out what's real.

I know too much about religion to be religious, so to speak, and I am not that stupid, either.

I know that science is very interested in answers, and I'm just happy with a good question.

Rely upon your own judgment; be true to your own conscience; follow the light that is within you; all outward lights are so many will-o'-the-wisps. There will be those who tell you that you are foolish; that your judgment is faulty; that your conscience is all awry, and that the light within you is darkness; but heed them not. If what they say is true, the sooner you, as a searcher of wisdom, find it out the better, and you can only make that discovery by bringing your powers to the test. Therefore, pursue your course bravely.

If men are really humble, they will realize that they discover, but do not create, truth.

Reason is a permanent blessing of God to the soul. Without it there can be no large religion.

If I open a book and see that the author is accusing an adversary of "infantile leftism" I shut it again right away. That's not my way of doing things; I don't belong to the world of people who do things that way. I insist on this difference as something essential: a whole morality is at stake; the one that concerns the search for truth and the relation to the other.

Science is expanding, and with it our vision of the universe. although this new and constantly changing view may not always give us comfort, it does have the virtue of truth according to our most effective resources for acquiring knowledge. No philosophy, moral outlook, or religion can be inconsistent with the findings of science and hope to endure among educated people.

I am a firm believer, that without speculation there is no good and original observation.

It is a common failing-and one that I have myself suffered from-to fall in love with a hypothesis and to be unwilling to take no for an answer. A love affair with a pet hypothesis can waste years of precious time. There is very often no finally decisive yes, though quite often there can be a decisive no.

Men who are lovers of wisdom [i.e., philosophers] must be inquirers into many things.

If I could do just one thing, it would be to dissociate faith from virtue, now and for good, and to expose it for what it is, a servile weakness, a refuge in cowardice, and a willingness to follow, with credulity, people who are in the highest degree unscrupulous.

Would that I could discover truth as easily as I can uncover falsehood.

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.

In order to discover truth, we must be truthful ourselves, and must welcome those who point out our errors as heartily as those who approve and confirm our discoveries.

It may be said "In research, if you know what you are doing, then you shouldn't be doing it." In a sense, if the answer turns out to be exactly what you expected, then you have learned nothing new, although you may have had your confidence increased somewhat.

The slow, the never ending approach to truth consists in perpetually forming and testing hypotheses, accepting those at which at the time seem to fit the facts and rejecting the others.

We can either have a twenty-first-century conversation about morality and the human well-being - a conversation in which we avail ourselves of all scientific insights and philosophical arguments that have accumulated in the last two thousand years of human discourse - or we can confine ourselves to a first-century conversation as it is preserved in the Bible.

This is one of the most important lessons of the scientific method: if you cannot fail, you cannot learn.

Start out understanding religion by saying everything is possibly wrong... As soon as you do that, you start sliding down an edge which is hard to recover from.

Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations. Of necessity, they observe with a preconceived idea, and when they devise an experiment, they can see, in its results,only a confirmation of their theory. In this way they distort observation and often neglect very important facts because they do not further their aim.

I'm proud to be an atheist - it helps me stand for so much more and fall for so much less.

I admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates in everything he did, said--and did not say.