All the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and...however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another. Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent on the science of MAN; since they lie under the cognizance of men, and are judged of by their powers and faculties.
David HumeBarbarity, caprice; these qualities, however nominally disguised, we may universally observe from the ruling character of the deity in all regular religions.
David HumeAbsolute monarchy,... is the easiest death, the true Euthanasia of the BRITISH constitution.
David HumeIt is seldom, that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom, that it must steal upon them by degrees, and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes, in order to be received.
David HumeThe first ideas of religion arose, not from contemplation of the works of nature, but from a concern with regard to the events of life.
David HumeHappy the man whom indulgent fortune allows to pay to virtue what he owes to nature, and to make a generous gift of what must otherwise be ravished from him by cruel necessity.
David HumeThe more tremendous the divinity is represented, the more tame and submissive do men become his ministers: And the more unaccountable the measures of acceptance required by him, the more necessary does it become to abandon our natural reason, and yield to their ghostly guidance and direction.
David Hume