“A propensity to hope and joy is real riches: One to fear and sorrow, real poverty.”

— David Hume, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)

About David Hume

1711 – 1776

Scottish philosopher and historian.

“Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination.”

“Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular.”

“Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals.”

“To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action when there is more reason to fear than to hope.”

“There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world.”

“Were there no men of vision, all who are blind would be dead.”

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

“He has no hope that never had a fear.”

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death.”