George Berkeley Quotes

Quotes about:

• Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few.

  George Berkeley

  Truth, Science, Games

  'Siris' (1744) para. 368

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• 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

  Fall, Philosophical, Tree

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• Few men think, yet all will have opinions.

  George Berkeley

  Men, Thinking, Opinion

  George Berkeley (1843). “Works, Including His Letters to Thomas Prior, Dean Gervais, Mr. Pope, &c. to which is Prefixed an Account of His Life”, p.187

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• What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.

  George Berkeley

  Spiritual, Philosophical, Science

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

  George Berkeley

  Men, Impossible, Should

  1750 Maxims Concerning Patriotism.

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• 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

  Heaven, Mind, Body

  A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge pt. 1, sec. 6 (1710)

  91 Copy quote

• To be is to be perceived

  George Berkeley

  Inspirational, Philosophy, Philosophical

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

  George Berkeley

  Imagination, Rays, May

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• We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.

  George Berkeley

  Inspirational, Dust, Complaining

  A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge introduction, sec. 3 (1710)

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• 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

  Men, Demise, Hell

  George Berkeley (1843). “Works, Including His Letters to Thomas Prior, Dean Gervais, Mr. Pope, &c. to which is Prefixed an Account of His Life”, p.461

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• 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

  Ideas, Soul, Perception

  George Berkeley (2015). “Principles of Human Knowledge: Human Understanding”, p.17, 谷月社

  24 Copy quote

• He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.

  George Berkeley

  Truth, Lying, Men

  George Berkeley (1837). “Works: Account of His Life and Letters”, p.362

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• The most ingenious men are now agreed, that [universities] are only nurseries of prejudice, corruption, barbarism, and pedantry.

  George Berkeley

  Men, Prejudice, Corruption

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• All men have opinions, but few think.

  George Berkeley

  Men, Thinking, Opinion

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  Ignorance, Men, Light

  George Berkeley (1843). “Works, Including His Letters to Thomas Prior, Dean Gervais, Mr. Pope, &c. to which is Prefixed an Account of His Life”, p.303

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• 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

  Writing, Fighting, Liberty

  George Berkeley (1871). “The Works of George Berkeley: Philosophical works”, p.37

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, Squares, Boards

  Quoted by "Punch"; reported in "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, 1922.

  31 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, Patriotism, Acting

  George Berkeley (1837). “Works: Account of His Life and Letters”, p.362

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• God is a being of transcendent and unlimited perfections: his nature therefore is incomprehensible to finite spirits.

  George Berkeley

  God, Perfection, Spirit

  George Berkeley (1843). “Works, Including His Letters to Thomas Prior, Dean Gervais, Mr. Pope, &c. to which is Prefixed an Account of His Life”, p.221

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

  George Berkeley

  Stupid, Silly, Animal

  George Berkeley, Alexander Campbell Fraser (1871). “Miscellaneous works. Index, v.1-3”, p.187

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• 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.

  George Berkeley

  Education, Religious, Children

  George Berkeley (1837). “Works: Account of His Life and Letters”, p.122

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

  George Berkeley

  Art, Plato, Writing

  George Berkeley, Joseph Stock (1820). “The works of George Berkeley”, p.403

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• Our youth we can have but to-day, We may always find time to grow old.

  George Berkeley

  Inspirational, May, Youth

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

  George Berkeley

  Knavery, Knaves, Thorough

  George Berkeley (1837). “Works: Account of His Life and Letters”, p.362

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• In short, if there were external bodies, it is impossible we should ever come to know it; and if there were not, we might have the very same reasons to think there were that we have now.

  George Berkeley

  Thinking, Body, Might

  George Berkeley (2015). “Principles of Human Knowledge: Human Understanding”, p.22, 谷月社

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