George Berkeley Quotes on Knowledge
George Berkeley was an Anglo-Irish philosopher and Anglican bishop best known for his theory of immaterialism, sometimes called subjective idealism. This page collects quotes attributed to George Berkeley on the topic of knowledge, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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“To be is to be perceived.”
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, §3 -
“Few men think, yet all will have opinions.”
Philonous to Hylas. The Second Dialogue. This appears in a passage first added in the third edition, (1734) -
Attributed to George Berkeley:
“It is impossible that I should conceive in my thoughts any sensible thing or object distinct from the sensation or perception of it.”
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“And what are these same evanescent Increments? They are neither finite Quantities nor Quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the Ghosts of departed Quantities?”
quoted in C. K. Raju, Cultural Foundations of Mathematics , Vol. 10, Pt. 4 : The Nature of Mathematical Proof and the Transmission of the Calculus from India to Europe (India: Pearson Longman, 2007) -
“For no one's authority ought to rank so high as to set a value on his words and terms even though nothing clear and determinate lies behind them.”
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