To understand the quotation, one needs to understand what is meant by reason and passion.

Reason's role is to
structure the world for us: it lays out a schematic of how objects and ideas are connected. The passions are necessary to
evaluate any object or idea as valuable, problematic, virtuous, immoral, good, or bad, because these forms of evaluation are
all based on either a positive or negative impression. It is commonly understood that "reasonable" persons think before
acting, while "passionate" (emotional) people, act without thinking. So, "reason" is associated with logical, methodical and
reasonable while "passion" is associated with emotional, illogical and unreasonable.
Reason is the slave of the passions in the sense that practical reason alone cannot give rise to moral motivation. In short,
there are beliefs and desires. What Hume says is that only desires can make us act, give reasons, determine our goals and
the purpose of us, tell us what is good or right and determine what is moral. Beliefs and rationality (reason) are just an
instrument, a slave, for achieving the goals given by the desires. If we are going to connect this in present times especially
on politics, we can see this in every political candidate or simply the politicians. Most of them want to enter to the political
arena because of their passion or desires. They act merely for the fulfilment of their wants and not because of the main
reason on politics- serving the people. Their reason which is to serve the people became a slave for their desire to gain
power, money and fame. Their desire overwhelmed, overthrown or overpowered their reason. Politicians are passionate
people for they are controlled by their emotions, emotions which is selfishness and negative in nature. Sad to say but only
few of them are logical persons which are those who can control their emotions. To clear this, an example is love. If you are
in love, reason "goes out the window," so does sight, thought, and logic. If you are inside the political arena especially when
you are now seated in a position in the government, reason goes out the window, the true nature of yourself, your emotion
will get out and as soon as you know, you are driven by your selfishness and corrupt practices aiming to fulfil your selfish
wants.
Hume is just saying that passions are more superior than reason. Hume's argument is that all preferences and
motives are emotional. There is no such thing as an unemotional or purely rational decision, because to decide, by its
nature, is to have a preference for something. He defends practical reason, according to which the role of reason is only to
find out which means helps achieve a given goal. Reason or the intellect plays no part in determining the goals. Our goals
are set exclusively by what Hume calls the passions and what today is most often called desires.