George Berkeley

George Berkeley – known as Bishop Berkeley – was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism" . Wikipedia

• Born: March 12, 1685, Dysart Castle, near Thomastown, County Kilkenny, Ireland

• Died: January 14, 1753, Oxford, England

• Spouse: Anne Forster

• Parents: William Berkeley

• Children: George Berkeley, Lucia Berkeley, Henry Berkeley

• Education: Trinity College Dublin

Great Thoughts Of George Berkeley

"Where the people are well educated, the art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of Plato."

"Few men think, yet all will have opinions."

"Of all men living [priests] are our greatest enemies. If it were possible, they would extinguish the very light of nature, turn the world into a dungeon, and keep mankind for ever in chains and darkness."

"That thing of hell and eternal punishment is the most absurd, as well as the most disagreeable thought that ever entered into the head of mortal man."

"The most ingenious men are now agreed, that [universities] are only nurseries of prejudice, corruption, barbarism, and pedantry."

"I had rather be an oyster than a man, the most stupid and senseless of animals."

"That food nourishes, sleep refreshes, and fire warms us; that to sow in the seed-time is the way to reap in the harvest, and, in general, that to obtain such or such ends, such or such means are conducive, all this we know, not by discovering any necessary connexion between our ideas, but only by the observation of the settled laws of nature, without which we should be all in uncertainty and confusion, and a grown man no more know how to manage himself in the affairs of life than an infant just born."