GEORGE BERKELEY QUOTES II

Irish philosopher (1685-1753)

The fawning courtier and the surly squire often mean the same thing--each his own interest.

GEORGE BERKELEY

attributed, Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical


Make a point never so clear, it is great odds that a man whose habits and the bent of whose mind lie a contrary way, shall be unable to comprehend it. So weak a thing is reason in competition with inclination.

GEORGE BERKELEY

attributed, Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical


All those who write either explicitly or by insinuation against the dignity, freedom, and immortality of the human soul, may so far forth be justly said to unhinge the principles of morality, and destroy the means of making men reasonably virtuous.

GEORGE BERKELEY

The Works of George Berkeley

Tags: soul


A patriot will admit there may be honest men, and that honest men may differ.

GEORGE BERKELEY

"Maxims Concerning Patriotism", Works


Every knave is a thorough knave.

GEORGE BERKELEY

"Maxims Concerning Patriotism", Works


This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul, or myself. By which words I do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived; for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived.

GEORGE BERKELEY

George Berkeley: A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge


Did men but consider that the sun, moon, and stars, and every other object of the senses, are only so many sensations in their minds, which have no other existence but barely being perceived, doubtless they would never fall down and worship their own ideas; but rather address their homage to that eternal invisible Mind which produces and sustains all things.

GEORGE BERKELEY

Principles, dialogues, and philosophical correspondence


A man whose passion for money runs high bids fair for being no patriot. And he likewise whose appetite is keen for power.

GEORGE BERKELEY

"Maxims Concerning Patriotism", Works


The question between the materialists and me is not, whether things have a real existence out of the mind of this or that person, but whether they have an absolute existence, distinct from being perceived by God, and exterior to all minds.

GEORGE BERKELEY

A treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge


We have first rais'd a Dust, and then complain, we cannot see.

GEORGE BERKELEY

A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge


And doth not this observation hold in the civil as well as natural world? Doth not power produce license, and license power? Do not whigs make tories, and tories whigs? Bigots make atheists, and atheists bigots?

GEORGE BERKELEY

Alciphron; or, The Minute Philosopher in Seven Dialogues


I am apt to think, if we knew what it was to be an angel for one hour, we should return to this world, though it were to sit on the brightest throne in it, with vastly more loathing and reluctance than we would now descend into a loathsome dungeon or sepulchre.

GEORGE BERKELEY

The Works of George Berkeley

Tags: angels


We know well what we lose by death, but we know not what we gain.

GEORGE BERKELEY

A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge

Tags: death


There are two parts in our nature, the baser, which consists of our senses and passions, and the more noble and rational, which is properly the human part, the other being common to us with brutes.

GEORGE BERKELEY

The Works of George Berkeley


A patriot will esteem no man for being of his party.

GEORGE BERKELEY

"Maxims Concerning Patriotism", Works

Tags: political parties


Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day:
Time's noblest offspring is the last.

GEORGE BERKELEY

On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America


That thing of hell and eternal punishment is the most absurd, as well as the most disagreeable thought that ever entered into the head of mortal man.

GEORGE BERKELEY

The Works of George Berkeley

Tags: Hell


Take away the signs from Arithmetic and Algebra, and pray what remains?

GEORGE BERKELEY

Philosophical Commentaries

Tags: math


Every individuality is at bottom only a special error.

GEORGE BERKELEY

A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge

Tags: individuality


No theory of the soul, as we know the soul in philosophy, is entitled to respect, which ignores or diminishes the reality of the personal union into which it has taken the body with itself, a union the most consummate and absolute of which we know, or of which we can conceive, infinitely transcending the completeness of the most perfect mechanical and chemical unions--a union so complete that, though two distinct substances are involved in it, it makes them, through a wide range of observations, as completely one to us as if they were one substance; so that we can say the human body does nothing proper to it without the soul, the human soul does nothing proper to it without the body.

GEORGE BERKELEY

A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge