Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profitable for us both, that I should labour with you today, and that you should aid me tomorrow.
David HumeRead
No advantages in this world are pure and unmixed.
Interpretation
All benefits in life come with drawbacks or complications.
David Hume's quote reflects a philosophical understanding that every advantage or benefit gained in life is accompanied by disadvantages, complexities, or moral dilemmas. This perspective invites us to recognize the duality of experiences and the need for a balanced view on what we consider beneficial or advantageous.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about ethical decision-making.
Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profitable for us both, that I should labour with you today, and that you should aid me tomorrow.
Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding.
All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.
The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness
There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.
To have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being, in order to prove the veracity of our senses, is surely making a very unexpected circuit.
There is no governor anywhere. You are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. If anybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled - by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.
If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.
For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment that we can savor - and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible.
A rarer spirit never Did steer humanity; but you gods will give us Some faults to make us men.
A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age - regardless of how they look on the outside - pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives.
Sometimes it seems as though each new step towards AI, rather than producing something which everyone agrees is real intelligence, merely reveals what real intelligence is not.
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