Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
Philosophers
David Hume
Scottish philosopher (1711-1776), master of British empiricism. His Treatise of Human Nature (1739) reduced causality to psychological habit and shook 2000 years of metaphysics. Kant said Hume broke his dogmatic slumber.
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David Hume's Other Quotes
Related Quotes
The wise man is free from passions, not because he does not feel, but because his judgments are correct.
-- Chrysippus of Soli
Virtue is sufficient for happiness.
-- Antisthenes
Virtue is a kind of mean.
-- Aristotle
The pleasant life is produced not by endless drinking and revelry but by sober reasoning.
-- Epicurus
Ethics as the study of man must be the study of the fundamental structure of human existence.
-- Tetsuro Watsuji
The good, in a word, is the realization of personality.
-- Kitarō Nishida