Daily Inspiration Quote by David Hume

A deliciously barbed sentence from a man famous for distrusting exactly what it seems to recommend. Hume praises the person “seasoned” with awareness of reason’s limits, then claims they will “fly” to revelation. The phrasing is the tell: “seasoned” suggests hard-earned sophistication, but “fly” and “greatest avidity” hint at panic, appetite, even intellectual impatience. If your rational faculties feel “imperfect,” the temptation is to bolt toward certainty that doesn’t require proving. Hume isn’t serenading faith; he’s diagnosing a psychological reflex.

The intent is to expose how easily skepticism about reason can be repurposed into a sales pitch for authority. The structure is almost a trap: accept premise A (human reason is flawed), and you’re nudged toward conclusion B (therefore revelation). That leap is the point. Hume’s broader project separates what we can justify from what we merely want to be true. When reason falters, people don’t typically become modest empiricists; they often become hungry for something that feels solid, prepackaged, and immune to rebuttal.

Context matters: in 18th-century Britain, “revealed truth” carried institutional weight, not just private comfort. The line reads like an anatomy of apologetics in an age trying to reconcile Newtonian confidence with religious inheritance. Hume’s subtext is that revelation frequently functions less as a higher epistemology than as a coping mechanism for epistemic anxiety. It’s a neat inversion: the more you notice reason’s cracks, the more vulnerable you are to anyone offering a seamless wall.