Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact; it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Experience guides our reasoning about facts but is not perfect and can lead to errors in some cases.
- In plain terms
- Experience helps us reason but sometimes makes us wrong.
- What can you take from it?
- Rely on experience but stay aware of its limits.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- When has your past experience misled you?
- How do you correct for experiential bias?
Another view
Experience can still be the best guide even when flawed.
More from David Hume
The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysi…
Permalink to quote #21 In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence.…
Permalink to quote #23 Nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable to the human race, and secretly admonished them to allow none of these biases to draw too much, so…
Permalink to quote #20
Related quotes
The art of concluding from experience and observation consists in evaluating probabilities, in estimating if they are high or numerous enough to constitute pro…
Benjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin quote #14 Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praise-worthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.
Willard van Orman QuineWillard van Orman Quine quote #3 Reasoning at every step he treads, Man yet mistakes his way, While meaner things, whom instinct leads, Are rarely known to stray.
William CowperWilliam Cowper quote #3