David Hume Quotes

I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.

I think that reality exists and that it's knowable.

Metaphysics is a science.

First, philosophy concerns itself with all kinds of issues that don't get much airtime in day-to-day life. What's the nature of reality? Can we ever truly know anything, and if so, how? What does it mean to be a moral agent? And while we're at it, is there any such thing as agency anyway?

The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.

The object of knowledge is what exists and its function to know about reality.

The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this is the path of persuasion (for truth is its companion); the other, that it is not and that it must not be - this I say to you is a path wholly unknowable.

Every man feels that perception gives him an invincible belief of the existence of that which he perceives; and that this belief is not the effect of reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception. When philosophers have wearied themselves and their readers with their speculations upon this subject, they can neither strengthen this belief, nor weaken it; nor can they shew how it is produced. It puts the philosopher and the peasant upon a level; and neither of them can give any other reason for believing his senses, than that he finds it impossible for him to do otherwise.

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

My major preoccupation is the question, 'What is reality?'

Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

Einstein said, if everything exists as a substance of qualities, and qualities exist only in mind, then all is mind.

Every day, I read books on philosophy and science fiction and human consciousness.

Since Plato, we have been considering the nature of knowledge, the meaning of meaning and the status of the physical world.

'Do not touch ontologically' doesn't mean 'are separated by empirically measurable hard edges.'

The typical person has no trouble believing without knowing. What people need to realize is simply that you do not need to believe to know.

I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those things I actually see and feel.

Intellectualism' is the belief that our mind comes upon a world complete in itself, and has the duty of ascertaining its contents; but has no power of re-determining its character, for that is already given.

I can feel this heart inside me and I conclude it exists. I can touch this world and I also conclude that it exists. All my knowledge ends at this point. The rest is hypothesis.

Metaphysics,--the science which determines what can and what cannot be known of being and the laws of being.

Everyone who observes himself doubting observes a truth, and about that which he observes he is certain; therefore he is certain about a truth. Everyone therefore who doubts whether truth exists has in himself a truth on which not to doubt.... Hence one who can doubt at all ought not to doubt the existence of truth.

Democritus says, "But we know nothing really; for truth lies deep down".

Logic doesn't apply to the real world. D. R. Hofstadter and D. C. Dennett (eds.) The Mind's I, 1981.

It has been said that metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.