Q0394

David Hume

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
Thinker David Hume
School Scottish Enlightenment
Source A Treatise of Human Nature I.4.7
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with A Treatise of Human Nature I.4.7, within the tradition of Scottish Enlightenment. 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 philosophy, 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.). Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0394

MLA: David Hume. “Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy,….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0394.

Chicago: David Hume. “Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy,….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0394.

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 wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals.
  5. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.

All quotations by David Hume

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme