Human Nature Quotes - Page 36

• It is clear that this essential Christian doctrine gives a new value to human nature, to human history and to human life which is not to be found in the other great oriental religions.

  Christopher Dawson

  Christian, Giving, Essentials

  Christopher Dawson (2008). “The Formation of Christendom”, p.159, Ignatius Press

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• At the core, there is one simple, overarching reason why so many people remain unsatisfied in their work and why most organisations fail to draw out the greatest talent, ingenuity, and creativity of their people and never become truly great, enduring organisations. It stems from an incomplete paradigm of who we are - our fundamental view of human nature. The fundamental reality is, human beings are not things needing to be motivated and controlled; they are four-dimensional - body, mind, heart, and spirit.

  Stephen Covey

  Heart, Creativity, Simple

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• At the heart of the gay marriage argument is an untruth: unions of two men or women are not the same as unions of husband and wife. The law cannot make it so, it can only require us to paint pretty pictures to cover up deep truths embedded in human nature.

  Maggie Gallagher

  Husband, Heart, Gay

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• Out of defeat can come the best in human nature. As Christians face storms of adversity, they may rise with more beauty. They are like trees that grow on mountain ridges -- battered by winds, yet trees in which we find the strongest wood.

  Billy Graham

  Christian, Adversity, Wind

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• The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas; and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to represent.

  Edward Gibbon

  Passion, Ideas, History

  Edward Gibbon (1781). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.317

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• It's not human nature to be great. It's human nature to survive, to be average and do what you have to do to get by. That is normal. When you have something good happen, it's the special people that can stay focused and keep paying attention to detail, working to get better and not being satisfied with what they have accomplished.

  Nick Saban

  Average, Special People, Get Better

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• Human nature must have come much nearer perfection than it is now, or will be in many generations, to exclude from such a control prejudice, selfishness, ambition, and injustice.

  Elihu Root

  Ambition, Perfection, Selfishness

  Elihu Root (1916). “Addresses on International Subjects”

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• In our time, what is at issue is the very nature of man, the image we have of his limits and possibilities as a man. History is not yet done with its exploration of the limits and meanings of human nature.

  C. Wright Mills

  Men, Issues, Curiosity

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.171, Oxford University Press

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• John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?

  Emma Goldman

  Character, Animal, Space

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.34, 谷月社

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• There are very few errors and false doctrines of which the beginning may not be traced up to unsound views about the corruption of human nature. Wrong views of the disease will always bring with them wrong views of the remedy. Wrong views of the corruption of human nature will always carry with them wrong views of the grand antidote and cure of that corruption.

  J. C. Ryle

  Errors, Views, Doctrine

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• Western science is approaching a paradigm shift of unprecedented proportions, one that will change our concepts of reality and of human nature, bridge the gap between ancient wisdom and modern science, and reconcile the differences between Eastern spirituality and Western pragmatism.

  Stanislav Grof

  Reality, Bridges, Differences

  Stanislav Grof (1985). “Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy”, p.16, SUNY Press

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• A reasonable estimate of economic organisation must allow for the fact that, unless industry is to be paralysed by recurrent revolts on the part of outraged human nature, it must satisfy criteria which are not purely economic.

  R. H. Tawney

  Facts, Economic, Criteria

  'Religion and the Rise of Capitalism' (1926)

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• The more experience and insight I obtain into human nature, the more convinced do I become that the greater portion of a man is purely animal.

  Henry Morton Stanley

  Animal, Men, Insight

  Henry Morton Stanley (1890). “In Darkest Africa”

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• None of us is guaranteed against failure or corruption of any kind; witness what's going on in the world in this moment, the follies of human nature and the failures of human nature.

  Morris West

  Nature, World, Kind

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• The greatest danger that besets us does not come from believers or atheists; it comes from those who, under the guise of religion, science or reason, imagine that we can free ourselves from the limitations of human nature and perfect the human species.

  Chris Hedges

  Atheist, Perfect, Doe

  "On Secular Fundamentalism" by Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com. April 7, 2008.

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• We should not lose ourselves in vainglorious sohemes for changing human nature all over the planet. Rather, we should learn to view ourselves with a sense of proportion and Christian humility before the enormous complexity of the world in which it has been given us to live.

  George F. Kennan

  Life, Christian, Humility

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• Whether at home or abroad, the task of statesman is to work with human nature warts and all, and to draw on instincts and even prejudices that can be turned to good purpose. It is never to try to recreate Mankind in a new image.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Home, Trying, Prejudice

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• It is probably true quite generally that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet. These lines may have their roots in quite different parts of human nature, in different times or different cultural environments or different religious traditions: hence if they actually meet, that is, if they are at least so much related to each other that a real interaction can take place, then one may hope that new and interesting developments may follow.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Religious, Real, Thinking

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• Machine intelligence of a human nature could be a century away, and immortality is at least a millennium away, if not unattainable altogether.

  Michael Shermer

  Machines, Unattainable, Immortality

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• Really to believe in human nature while striving to know the thousand forces that warp it from its ideal development - to call for and expect much from men and women, and not to be disappointed and embittered if they fall short - to try to do good with people rather than to them - this is my religion on its human side. And if God exists, I think that he must be in the warm sun, in the kindly actions of the people we know and read of, in the beautiful things of art and nature, and in the closeness of friendships.

  Randolph Bourne

  Beautiful, Art, Believe

  "The Radical Will: Selected Writings, 1911-1918".

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• Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office-seeking. Men of good character and impulses are betrayed by it into all sorts of meanness.

  Rutherford B. Hayes

  Character, Men, Office

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• We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness, and no pictures that represent us otherwise can be true; though happily for human nature, gleamings of that pure spirit in whose likeness man has been fashioned, are to be seen, relieving its deformities, and mitigating, if not excusing its crimes.

  James F. Cooper

  Men, Selfishness, World

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• The process has now run full circle: Preaching originates in personal counseling; preaching is personal counseling on a group basis; personal counseling originates in preaching. Personal counseling imparts to the preacher a practical familiarity with human nature which he would not otherwise obtain.

  Harry Emerson Fosdick

  Running, Circles, Groups

  "Preaching as Counseling : The Unique Method of Harry Emerson Fosdick". Book by Edmund Holt Linn, 1966.

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• We have long struggles with ourself, of which the outcome is one of our actions; they are, as it were, the inner side of human nature. This inner side is God's; the outer side belongs to men.

  Honore de Balzac

  Struggle, Men, Long

  "Seraphita". Book by Honoré de Balzac, 1835.

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• The story of the Fall always fascinates me as a play ground, but I cannot find any profound meaning in it, because of my 'liberal' view of human nature: I cannot believe in a state of original innocence, still less in a profound meaning in it, and I am always minimising the conception and the extent of Sin and the sinfulness of sex.

  E. M. Forster

  Sex, Believe, Fall

  Selected Letters (1983-1985): Letter 396, to Eric Fletcher, July 9, 1951.

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