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About this quote

What does it mean?
All human industry aims at happiness, driving the invention of arts sciences laws and societies.
In plain terms
People work and create mainly to be happy.
What can you take from it?
Happiness is the goal behind all human progress.

Where it applies

  • policy making
  • career choices
  • social reform

Putting it to work

  • align goals with well-being
  • measure success by happiness

Questions to consider

  • Is your work leading to happiness?
  • What societies are designed for happiness?

Another view

Sometimes industry brings misery instead of happiness.

More from David Hume

  1. If nature has been frugal in her gifts and endowments, there is the more need of art to supply her defects. If she has been generous and liberal, know that she…

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  2. All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinatio…

    Permalink to quote #55
  3. Art may make a suit of clothes; but nature must produce a man.

    Permalink to quote #52

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