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Quote by David Hume

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An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

This book delves into the fundamental questions of human perception, reason, and the limits of human understanding, offering a comprehensive examination of the nature of knowledge and its acquisition. more

Author

David Hume
David Hume

David Hume, born on May 7, 1711, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and died on August 25, 1776, was an outstanding philosopher, historian, and economist. Known for his contributions to empiricism and skepticism, his works have had a profound impact on subsequent philosophy, economics, and psychology. more

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“...Reason should take on anew the most difficult of all its tasks, namely, that of self-knowledge, and to institute a court of justice, by which reason may secure its rightful claims while dismissing all its groundless pretensions, and this not by mere decrees but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws; and this court is none other than the critique of pure reason itself.”

ReasonKnowledgeLimitsIllusionSelf KnowledgeCritique
Book:Critique of pure reason
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“If women patronize the wheel the number of buyers will be twice as large. If women ride they must, when riding, dress more rationally than they have been wont to do. If they do this many prejudices as to what they may be allowed to wear will melt away. Reason will gain upon precedent and ere long the comfortable, sensible, and artistic wardrobe of the rider will make the conventional style of woman's dress absurd to the eye and unenduring to the understanding. A reform often advances most rapidly by indirection. An ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory; and the graceful and becoming costume of woman on the bicycle will convince the world that has brushed aside the theories, no matter how well constructed, and the arguments, no matter how logical, of dress-reformers.”

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Book:How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle: Reflections of an Influential 19th Century Woman
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“Jesus' willingness to accommodate Thomas' unbelief is a reminder that God can handle our doubt. And that the rationalist doesn't need to see, touch, or run a lab test in order to believe in the resurrected Christ. Jesus told him, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me” (Jn 20:29) This is not a plea to accept what goes against reason, but it is an invitation to discover a faith that goes beyond it. The example of Thomas is for the stubborn skeptic in us all.”

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Author:David D. Flowers
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“I am more touched, still, that you are trying to understand - through rational thought - that which cannot be understood at all. The divine, as Boehme said, is unground, unfathomable, something outside the world as we experience it. But this is a difference of our minds, dearest one. I wish to arrive on wings, while you advance steadily on foot, magnifying glass in hand. I am a smattering wanderer, seeking God within the outer contours, searching for a new way of knowing. You stand upon the ground, and consider the evidence inch by inch. Your way is more rational and more methodical, but I cannot change my way.”

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Book:The Signature of All Things
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“[At the beginning of modern science], a light dawned on all those who study nature. They comprehended that reason has insight only into what it itself produces according to its own design; that it must take the lead with principles for its judgments according to constant laws and compel nature to answer its questions, rather than letting nature guide its movements by keeping reason, as it were, in leading-strings; for otherwise accidental observations, made according to no previously designed plan, can never connect up into a necessary law, which is yet what reason seeks and requires. Reason, in order to be taught by nature, must approach nature with its principles in one hand, according to which alone the agreement among appearances can count as laws, and, in the other hand, the experiments thought in accordance with these principles - yet in order to be instructed by nature not like a pupil, who has recited to him whatever the teacher wants to say, but like an appointed judge who compels witnesses to answer the questions he puts to them. Thus even physics owes the advantageous revolution in its way of thinking to the inspiration that what reason would not be able to know of itself and has to learn from nature, it has to seek in the latter (though not merely ascribe to it) in accordance with what reason itself puts into nature. This is how natural science was first brought to the secure course of a science after groping about for so many centuries.”

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Book:Critique of pure reason
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