Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profitable for us both, that I should labour with you today, and that you should aid me tomorrow.
David HumeRead
The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.
Interpretation
What this quote means
When the best qualities are corrupted, it can lead to the worst outcomes.
David Humeβs quote suggests that the degradation or corruption of virtuous and valuable qualities can result in negative consequences. This underlines the importance of preserving integrity and goodness, as their loss can give way to detrimental outcomes, reflecting a deeper philosophical understanding of morality and the nature of humanity.
Themes
CorruptionMoralityIntegrityConsequencesVirtue
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about ethics in business, one could say, 'Remember, the corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.'
More from David Hume
All quotes βEloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding.
David HumeRead
All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.
David HumeRead
The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness
David HumeRead
There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.
David HumeRead
To have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being, in order to prove the veracity of our senses, is surely making a very unexpected circuit.
David HumeRead
Similar quotes
We are here speaking in open disapproval of that false system of philosophy, not so long ago introduced, by which, because of an extended and unbridled desire of novelty, truth is not sought where it truly resides, and, with a disregard for the holy and apostolic traditions, other vain, futile, uncertain doctrines, not approved by the Church are accepted as true, on which very vain men mistakenly think that truth itself is supported and sustained.
Pope Gregory XviRead
There is a concept that is the corrupter and destroyer of all others. I speak not of Evil, whose limited empire is that of ethics; I speak of the infinite.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
Consciousness succumbs all too easily to unconscious influences, and these are often truer and wiser than our conscious thinking.
Carl JungRead
Every man contemplates an angel in his future self.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
To be born, to live and to die is merely to change forms... And what does one form matter any more than another?... Each form has its own sort of happiness and unhappiness. From the elephant down to the flea... from the flea down to the sensitive and living molecule which is the origin of all, there is not a speck in the whole of nature that does not feel pain or pleasure.
John DeweyRead
Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
Jonathan SwiftRead