Q0251

David Hume

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals.
Thinker David Hume
School Moral Philosophy
Source Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, App. I
Theme Morality
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, App. I, within the tradition of Moral Philosophy. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of morality, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In David Hume's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: David Hume. (n.d.). Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0251

MLA: David Hume. “Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0251.

Chicago: David Hume. “Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0251.

Same thinker

More from David Hume

  1. 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.
  2. A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
  3. For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other.
  4. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.
  5. Custom, then, is the great guide of human life.

All quotations by David Hume

Same theme

More on morality

  1. It is worse to do injustice than to suffer it.
  2. No one errs willingly.
  3. Love is the desire for the perpetual possession of the good.
  4. Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe…: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
  5. Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Browse the morality theme