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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Popularity and patriotism can lead to the rise of oppressive power.
David Hume warns that the pursuit of popularity and the fervent display of patriotism often serve as pathways that can lead to the establishment of authoritarian power structures. This suggests that when individuals prioritize popularity and national pride over critical thinking and justice, they may inadvertently support tyranny and oppression disguised as patriotism.
Themes
PopularityPatriotismPowerTyrannyPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a political debate to illustrate the dangers of blind nationalism.
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
A minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary.
Christopher IsherwoodRead
Only in solitude do we find ourselves; and in finding ourselves, we find in ourselves all our brothers in solitude.
Miguel De UnamunoRead
Every society, all government, and every kind of civil compact therefore, is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community.
George MasonRead
All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based - or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug - it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.
Carl SaganRead
This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.War is god.
Cormac MccarthyRead
Religions have depended on the relative isolation and ignorance of their flocks, forever and this is all breaking down.
Daniel DennettRead