Quotes from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
14 notable lines from David Hume · 1748
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
Closing words, Section XII No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish.
Hume's maxim on miracles, Section X Custom, then, is the great guide of human life.
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding That the sun will not rise to-morrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise.
Section IV, "Sceptical Doubts" A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.
Section X, "Of Miracles" Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone, which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past.
Section V, "Sceptical Solution of these Doubts" All events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any tie between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected.
Section VII, "Of the Idea of Necessary Connexion" A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.
Definition of a miracle, Section X Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding All inferences from experience, therefore, are effects of custom, not of reasoning.
Section V, "Sceptical Solution of these Doubts" We may define a cause to be an object, followed by another, and where all the objects, similar to the first, are followed by objects similar to the second. Or in other words, where, if the first object had not been, the second never had existed.
Hume's definition of cause, Section VII If we reason a priori, anything may appear able to produce anything. The falling of a pebble may, for aught we know, extinguish the sun; or the wish of a man control the planets in their orbits.
Section XII, "Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy" Adam, though his rational faculties be supposed, at the very first, entirely perfect, could not have inferred from the fluidity and transparency of water that it would suffocate him, or from the light and warmth of fire that it would consume him.
Section IV, "Sceptical Doubts"