“Where ambition can be so happy as to cover its enterprizes, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of all human passions.”

— David Hume, The History of England (1754-62), Volume I, Part IV: William the Conqueror

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.”

“They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.”

“Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.”

“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”

“That which is most excellent, and is most to be desired by all happy, honest and healthy-minded men, is dignified leisure.”

“The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness.”

“Knowledge is not happiness, and science but an exchange of ignorance for that which is another kind of ignorance.”