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 heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques how popularity and patriotism can lead to power abuses and tyranny.
David Hume's quote reflects on the paradoxical relationship between popularity, patriotism, and the rise of oppressive power structures. He suggests that the paths leading to power—often paved with public sentiment and flattery—can also result in treachery and arbitrary governance, emphasizing the dangers of unchecked authority and the manipulation of public goodwill for selfish ends, including the exploitation of religious sentiment by those in power.
Themes
PopularityPatriotismPowerTyrannyAuthorityGovernment
In practice
Example use cases
In a political debate to highlight the risks of populism.
More from David Hume
All quotes →Eloquence, 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
Authority and place demonstrate and try the tempers of men, by moving every passion and discovering every frailty.
PlutarchRead
I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.
Bertrand RussellRead
Surrendering to jargon is a sign of journalism's dismal lack of self-confidence in the optimized age of content-management systems.
George PackerRead
Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time. Money is talking to itself.
Don DelilloRead
You lack a foot to travel? Then journey into yourself - that leads to transformation of dust into pure gold.
RumiRead
The 'Grace of Kings' isn't a narrative about a return to some golden age, to a lost status quo ante. It portrays a dynamic world in transition, where the redistribution of power is messy, morally ambivalent, and only lurches toward more justice.
Ken LiuRead