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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Hume argues that miracles contradict natural laws and thus cannot be proven true against established experience.
David Hume suggests that miracles, by their very nature, challenge the established laws of nature that have been consistently observed through experience. He posits that because these laws are firm and unchanging, any claim of a miracle is inherently less credible, as it lacks the backing of empirical evidence, and argues that the proof against miracles is as definitive as any logical argument drawn from experience.
Themes
MiracleNatureExperienceEvidencePhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about the validity of witness accounts of miracles.
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
That moon which the sky never saw even in dreams has risen again
RumiRead
In the same way, you were happy in spring, With the half colors of quarter-things, The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds, The single bird, the obscure moon- The obscure moon lighting an obscure world Of thing that would never be quite expressed, Where you yourself were never quite yourself And did not want nor have to be.
Wallace StevensRead
To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller, is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbors.
John Stuart MillRead
To measure the man, measure his heart.
Malcolm ForbesRead
Whoever thought that he had understood something of me had merely construed something out of me, after his own image.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
You cannot be a man of faith unless you know how to doubt.
Thomas MertonRead