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
Superstition is an enemy to civil liberty.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Superstition can hinder freedom and progress in society.
In this quote, David Hume suggests that superstition poses a threat to civil liberty because it encourages irrational beliefs and behaviors that can restrict individual freedoms and societal development. By relying on superstitions instead of reason and evidence, individuals and societies may become constrained by unfounded fears and limitations, impeding personal and collective growth.
Themes
SuperstitionCivil LibertyFreedomReasonIrrationality
In practice
Example use cases
In a public speech advocating for scientific education, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of reason over superstition.
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
Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.
Joseph CampbellRead
Yes, all fundamentalists feel that in a secular society, God has been relegated to the margin, to the periphery and they are all in different ways seeking to drag him out of that peripheral position, back to center stage.
Karen ArmstrongRead
The past stays put, I just keep moving farther away from it.
Thomas JeffersonRead
There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean - hell, I know that.
Stephen KingRead
Many of us spend our entire lives in the same bubble - we surround ourselves with people who share our opinions, speak the way we speak, and look the way we look. We fear leaving those familiar surroundings, which is natural, but through exploration of the unfamiliar we stop focusing on the labels that define WHAT we are and discover WHO we are.
Adam BraunRead
Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist β someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.
Peter SengeRead