David Hume Quotes About Imagination

Quotes about: Imagination

• Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers.

  David Hume

  Mistake, Imagination, Philosopher

  David Hume (2015). “A Treatise of Human Nature”, p.463, David Hume

• I say then, that belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain. This variety of terms, which may seem so unphilosophical, is intended only to express that act of the mind, which renders realities, or what is taken for such, more present to us than fictions, causes them to weigh more in the thought, and gives them a superior influence on the passions and imagination.

  David Hume

  Taken, Passion, Reality

  David Hume (1758). “Essays and Treatises on several subjects, etc. New edition”, p.311

• We have no other notion of cause and effect, but that of certain objects, which have always conjoin'd together, and which in all past instances have been found inseparable. We cannot penetrate into the reason of the conjunction. We only observe the thing itself, and always find that from the constant conjunction the objects acquire an union in the imagination.

  David Hume

  Science, Past, Imagination

• Belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain.

  David Hume

  Vivid Imagination, Able, Belief

  David Hume, Tom L. Beauchamp (2000). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: A Critical Edition”, p.39, Oxford University Press

• The imagination of man is naturally sublime, delighted with whatever is remote and extraordinary, and running, without control, into the most distant parts of space and time in order to avoid the objects, which custom has rendered too familiar to it.

  David Hume

  Running, Men, Order

  David Hume (1793). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.180

• In the sphere of natural investigation, as in poetry and painting, the delineation of that which appeals most strongly to the imagination, derives its collective interest from the vivid truthfulness with which the individual features are portrayed.

  David Hume

  Imagination, Vivid, Spheres

• Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass.

  David Hume

  Imagination, Heaven, Perception

  1739 A Treatise of Human Nature, bk.1, pt.2, section 6.

• It is a certain rule that wit and passion are entirely incompatible. When the affections are moved, there is no place for the imagination.

  David Hume

  Passion, Imagination, Affection

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.697, Delphi Classics

• Nothing more powerfully excites any affection than to conceal some part of its object, by throwing it into a kind of shade, whichat the same time that it shows enough to prepossess us in favour of the object, leaves still some work for the imagination.

  David Hume

  Passion, Imagination, Shade

  David Hume, Tom L. Beauchamp (2007). “A Dissertation on the Passions: The Natural History of Religion : a Critical Edition”, p.112, Oxford University Press

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