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The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought QUOTES

The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought QUOTES

1 " While skepticism is often associated with nihilism and paralysis, Hume suggests that it actually tends to lead to inner tranquility, intellectual humility, and a passion for ever-further inquiry. "

― Dennis C. Rasmussen , The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought

2 " Unable to situate such phenomena within their narrow understanding of nature’s operations, primitive peoples would instinctively attribute them to “the direction of some invisible and designing power.”34 In Smith’s view, then, the first religions were, like later scientific theories, inventions of the imagination designed to explain the inexplicable and thereby satisfy the human mind. Gods were created by human beings rather than the other way around, and they were created as a direct result of human ignorance. Nor was it solely, or even primarily, positive passions such as gratitude that produced belief in willful deities, according to Smith’s account; rather, it was mostly a combination of terror and cowardice that led to “the lowest and most pusillanimous superstition.”35 "

― Dennis C. Rasmussen , The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought