George Berkeley Quotes

Enjoy the top 63 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by George Berkeley.

“Religion is the centre which unites, and the cement which connects the several parts of members of the political body.”
— George Berkeley —

“A mind at liberty to reflect on its own observations, if it produce nothing useful to the world, seldom fails of entertainment to itself.”

— George Berkeley

So long as I confine my thoughts to my own ideas divested of words, I do not see how I can be easily mistaken.

— George Berkeley

“The eye by long use comes to see even in the darkest cavern: and there is no subject so obscure but we may discern some glimpse of truth by long poring on it.”

— George Berkeley

That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow.

— George Berkeley

“Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward pretence to it; but the free-thinker alone is truly free.”

— George Berkeley

“From my own being, and from the dependency I find in myself and my ideas, I do, by an act of reason, necessarily infer the existence of a God, and of all created things in the mind of God.”

— George Berkeley

“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

“All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth - in a word, all those bodies which compose the frame of the world - have not any subsistence without a mind.”

— George Berkeley

The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.

— George Berkeley

I had rather be an oyster than a man, the most stupid and senseless of animals.

— George Berkeley

“Many things, for aught I know, may exist, whereof neither I nor any other man hath or can have any idea or notion whatsoever.”

— George Berkeley

“It is impossible that a man who is false to his friends and neighbours should be true to the public.”

— George Berkeley

“Where the people are well educated, the art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of Plato.”

— George Berkeley

“Religion is the centre which unites, and the cement which connects the several parts of members of the political body.”

— George Berkeley

“To be is to be perceived (Esse est percipi)." Or, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”

— George Berkeley

“Whatever is immediately perceived is an idea: and can any idea exist out of the mind?”

— George Berkeley

“To be is to be perceived”

— George Berkeley

“But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park [ ... ] and nobody by to perceive them. [ ... ] The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived; the trees therefore are in the garden [ ... ] no longer than while there is somebody by to perceive them.”

— George Berkeley

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

“If what you mean by the word "matter" be only the unknown support of unknown qualities, it is no matter whether there is such a thing or no, since it no way concerns us; and I do not see the advantage there is in disputing about what we know not what, and we know not why.”

— George Berkeley

Whenever I attempt to frame a simple idea of time, abstracted from the succession of ideas in my mind, which flows uniformly, and is participated by all beings, I am lost and embrangled in inextricable difficulties.

— George Berkeley

“That food nourishes, sleep refreshes, and fire warms us; that to sow in the seed-time is the way to reap in the harvest, and, in general, that to obtain such or such ends, such or such means are conducive, all this we know, not by discovering any necessary connexion between our ideas, but only by the observation of the settled laws of nature, without which we should be all in uncertainty and confusion, and a grown man no more know how to manage himself in the affairs of life than an infant just born.”

— George Berkeley

“Nothing can be plainer, than that the motions, changes, decays, and dissolutions, which we hourly see befall natural bodies (and which is what we mean by the course of nature), cannot possibly affect an active, simple, uncompounded substance: such a being therefore is indissoluble by the force of nature, that is to say, the soul of man is naturally immortal.”

— George Berkeley

“What doubts, what hypotheses, what labyrinths of amusement, what fields of disputation, what an ocean of false learning, may be avoided by that single notion of immaterialism!”

— George Berkeley

“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

“To me it seems that liberty and virtue were made for each other. If any man wish to enslave his country, nothing is a fitter preparative than vice; and nothing leads to vice so surely as irreligion.”

— George Berkeley

“How often must I repeat, that I know or am conscious of my own being; and that I myself am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thinking, active principle that perceives, knows, wills, and operates about ideas?”

— George Berkeley

Every knave is a thorough knave, and a thorough knave is a knave throughout.

— George Berkeley

Colour, Figure, Motion, Extension and the like, considered only so many Sensations in the Mind, are perfectly known, there being nothing in them which is not perceived. But if they are looked on as notes or Images, referred to Things or Archetypes existing without the Mind, then are we involved all in Scepticism.

— George Berkeley

“Doth the Reality of sensible things consist in being perceived? or, is it something distinct from their being perceived, and that bears no relation to the mind?”

— George Berkeley

Whatever the world thinks, he who hath not much meditated upon God, the human soul, and the summum bonum, may possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman.

— George Berkeley

“Certainly he who can digest a second or third fluxion need not, methinks, be squeamish about any point in divinity.”

— George Berkeley

“To be a good patriot, a man must consider his countrymen as God's creatures, and himself as accountable for his acting towards them.”

— George Berkeley

“But the velocities of the velocities - the second, third, fourth, and fifth velocities, etc. - exceed, if I mistake not, all human understanding ...”

— George Berkeley

Of all men living [priests] are our greatest enemies. If it were possible, they would extinguish the very light of nature, turn the world into a dungeon, and keep mankind for ever in chains and darkness.

— George Berkeley

It would much conduce to the public benefit, if, instead of discouraging free-thinking, there was erected in the midst of this free country a dianoetic academy, or seminary for free-thinkers, provided with retired chambers, and galleries, and shady walks and groves, where, after seven years spent in silence and meditation, a man might commence a genuine free-thinker, and from that time forward, have license to think what he pleased, and a badge to distinguish him from counterfeits.

— George Berkeley

“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

I imagine that thinking is the great desideratum of the present age; and the cause of whatever is done amiss may justly be reckoned the general neglect of education in those who need it most, the people of fashion. What can be expected where those who have the most influence have the least sense, and those who are sure to be followed set the worst examples?

— George Berkeley

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

— George Berkeley

“The table I write on I say exists ... meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it.”

— George Berkeley

“Man is an animal, formidable both from his passions and his reason; his passions often urging him to great evils, and his reason furnishing means to achieve them. To train this animal, and make him amenable to order; to inure him to a sense of justice and virtue; to withhold him from ill courses by fear, and encourage him in his duty by hopes; in short, to fashion and model him for society, hath been the aim of civil and religious institutions; and, in all times, the endeavor of good and wise men. The aptest method for attaining this end hath been always judged a proper education.”

— George Berkeley

A ray of imagination or of wisdom may enlighten the universe, and glow into remotest centuries.

— George Berkeley

“The world is like a board with holes in it, and the square men have got into the round holes, and the round into the square.”

— George Berkeley

“Casting an eye on the education of children, from whence I can make a judgment of my own, I observe they are instructed in religious matters before they can reason about them, and consequently that all such instruction is nothing else but filling the tender mind of a child with prejudices.”