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What would become of history, had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian, according to the experience, what we have had of mankind?

— David Hume An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

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More quotes by David Hume

Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.

Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741)

It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value.

Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741)

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.

The History of England (1754)

Heaven and Hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad; but the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.

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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

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History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

James Joyce Ulysses (1922)

If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future.

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I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, — so good night!

Thomas Jefferson

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: David Hume (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.