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

Westward the course of empire takes its way; Time's noblest offspring is the last.

— George Berkeley

In the pursuit of truth we must beware of being misled by terms which we do not rightly understand. That is the chief point. Almost all philosophers utter the caution; few observe it.

— George Berkeley

For no one's authority ought to rank so high as to set a value on his words and terms even though nothing clear and determinate lies behind them.

— George Berkeley

Solicitation and effort or conation belong properly to animate beings alone. When they are attributed to other things, they must be taken in a metaphorical sense; but a philosopher should abstain from metaphor.

— George Berkeley

Abstract terms (however useful they may be in argument) should be discarded in meditation, and the mind should be fixed on the particular and the concrete, that is, on the things themselves.

— George Berkeley

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

— George Berkeley

That we have first rais'd a Dust, and then complain, we cannot see.

— George Berkeley

That there is no such thing as what philosophers call material substance, I am seriously persuaded: but if I were made to see any thing absurd or skeptical in this, I should then have the same reason to renounce this, that I imagine I have now to reject the contrary opinion.

— 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

Seeing therefore they are both [heat and pain] immediately perceived at the same time, and the fire affects you only with one simple, or uncompounded idea, it follows that this same simple idea is both the intense heat immediately perceived, and the pain;and consequently, that the intense heat immediately perceived, is nothing distinct from a particular sort of pain.

— George Berkeley

Since therefore, as well those degrees of heat that are not painful, as those that are, can exist in a thinking substance; may we not conclude that external bodies are absolutely incapable of any degree of heat whatsoever?

— George Berkeley

Few men think; yet all have opinions.

— 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

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

— George Berkeley