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About this quote

What does it mean?
Religious mistakes lead to real harm, while philosophical mistakes are mostly silly.
In plain terms
Religious errors are dangerous; philosophical ones are not.
What can you take from it?
Treat religious claims with more caution than philosophical ones.

Where it applies

  • debating faith
  • evaluating risks
  • critiquing systems

Putting it to work

  • assess theological claims
  • warn against dogma

Questions to consider

  • When does a philosophical error become dangerous?

Another view

Some philosophical errors can have dangerous real-world consequences.

More from David Hume

  1. This deficiency in our ideas is not, indeed, perceived in common life, nor are we sensible, that in the most usual conjunctions of cause and effect we are as i…

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  2. No quality of human nature is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive b…

    Permalink to quote #11
  3. I am first affrighted and confounded with that forelorn solitude, in which I am plac'd in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not…

    Permalink to quote #8

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