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Who really said it

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence

Written by David Hume 1711–1776 · Scottish Enlightenment philosopher
Verified Free to reuse

Hume wrote this in Section X (“Of Miracles”), Part I of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, first published in 1748 as Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding. The original reads “A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence” — the popular version simply drops the connective “therefore.”

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence” David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, "Of Miracles," Part I (1748)

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Provenance

The source

Work
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Location
Section X, “Of Miracles,” Part I (para. E 10.4)
First published
1748 (as Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding)
Author
David Hume (1711–1776)

A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence. In such conclusions as are founded on an infallible experience, he expects the event with the last degree of assurance, and regards his past experience as a full proof of the future existence of that event.

The sentence opens Hume’s argument in “Of Miracles” that testimony for a miracle must be weighed against the uniform experience that argues against it.

Read Section X “Of Miracles” at davidhume.org

How we verified it

Public domain

The sentence comes from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, first published in 1748 — centuries before the 1931 U.S. copyright threshold — so the text is firmly in the public domain.

Fact-check

One word gets dropped

This line is genuinely Hume’s — the only real distortion is a small one of wording, plus a broader idea often blurred into it.

The popular quote Minor paraphrase

Hume’s original reads “A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.” The circulating version drops the connective “therefore,” which linked the sentence to the reasoning that precedes it in the Enquiry ↗.

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” Different quote

That more famous slogan is often credited to Hume, but as Quote Investigator ↗ documents, its modern phrasing traces to Marcello Truzzi and Carl Sagan in the 1970s–80s, not to Hume himself.

The attribution is sound: Hume wrote this in Section X of the 1748 Enquiry ↗ — just with a “therefore” the internet tends to leave out.

Context

Why it mattered

The sentence is the hinge of Hume’s celebrated essay “Of Miracles.” Having argued that belief in any matter of fact rests on experience, Hume concludes that a rational person weighs each claim in proportion to the evidence supporting it — and that the uniform experience against a miracle is itself a “proof” that testimony must overcome.

The principle became a cornerstone of empiricist epistemology and, later, of scientific skepticism, echoing in probability theory and in modern debates over extraordinary claims.

In proportion as the fact is more or less unusual, the evidence must be weighed more or less heavily.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Truth

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Hume Texts Online — Section X, "Of Miracles"davidhume.org

The scholarly primary edition; the quoted sentence sits at para. E 10.4.
Quote Investigator — extraordinary claims / Humequoteinvestigator.com

Traces the 1748 origin and the exact early wording of the line.
"Of Miracles" full chapter textourcivilisation.com

Public-domain full text for the surrounding passage.
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Gutenberg)gutenberg.org

Free public-domain e-text of the complete Enquiry.
David Hume — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophyplato.stanford.edu

Scholarly overview of Hume's life, epistemology, and the argument on miracles.

The author

About David Hume

David Hume

1711–1776 · Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian & essayist

David Hume was a leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, best known for a rigorous empiricism that grounded all knowledge in experience. His An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) reworked the ideas of his earlier Treatise of Human Nature into a more accessible form, and its Section X, “Of Miracles,” remains one of philosophy’s most cited arguments about the weighing of testimony and evidence.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, “Of Miracles,” Part I (London, 1748; first published as Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding).

MLA (9th ed.)

Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 1748.

APA (7th ed.)

Hume, D. (1748). An enquiry concerning human understanding.

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/a-wise-man-proportions-his-belief-to-the-evidence

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