Human Nature Quotes - Page 37

• 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 area between the nose and the chin, the subject of kissing and the vehicle for speech, is perhaps even more known and set upon than the eyes. The mouth is also riddled with a complex interweaving of folds, curves, flats and lost-and-found edges. These nuances are needed by a perceptive person who might try to understand human nature.

  Robert Genn

  Eye, Kissing, Curves

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• Human nature turns out to be more complicated than the idea that people will get along if only the rules are clear enough. Uncertainty, the ultimate evil that modern law seeks to eradicate, generally fosters cooperation, not the opposite.

  Philip K. Howard

  Law, Opposites, Ideas

  Philip K. Howard (2011). “The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America”, p.183, Random House

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• When I loose my faith in Human nature, I put my faith in Nature-

  Lucinda Riley

  Humans

  Lucinda Riley (2012). “The Orchid House: A Novel”, p.276, Simon and Schuster

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• Whatever was in the human nature of Christ was moved at the bidding of the divine will; yet it does not follow that in Christ there was no movement of the will proper to human nature, for the good wills of other saints are moved by God's will... For although the will cannot be inwardly moved by any creature, yet it can be moved inwardly by God.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Doe, Saint, Bidding

  St Thomas Aquinas (2013). “Summa Theologica, Volume 4 (Part III, First Section)”, p.2120, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Irrational passions would seem to be as much a part of human nature as is reason.

  Aristotle

  Passion, Reason, Irrational

  Aristotle (1869). “The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle”, p.65

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• If you let people follow their feelings, they will be able to do good. This is what is meant by saying that human nature is good.

  Mencius

  People, Feelings, Able

  The Book of Mencius bk. 6, pt. 1, v. 6

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• The more I deal in it, the surer I am that human nature is all of the same critter, but that there's a heap of choice in the cuts.

  George Horace Lorimer

  Cutting, Choices, Critters

  George Horace Lorimer (2017). “More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son”, p.85, Lulu.com

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• In a large congregation, while there is a wide diversification of interest, it is also true that there are only a few basic human problems. It must also be taken into consideration that people are people regardless of who they are or what their backgrounds may be. There are certain deep universal appeals to human interest and to these human nature always responds.

  Norman Vincent Peale

  Taken, People, May

  Dr. Norman Vincent Peale (2007). “A Guide to Confident Living”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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• There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream; which, by their vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface, and laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil around them from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and hold up many a neighboring plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity.

  Washington Irving

  Weed, Roots, Tree

  Washington Irving (2015). “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. – The Complete Collection: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Voyage, Roscoe, A Royal Poet, A Sunday in London and many more (Illustrated)”, p.133, e-artnow

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• Advertising is the modern substitute for argument, its function is to make the worse appear the better article. A confused competition of all propagandas -- those insults to human nature -- is carried on by the most expert psychological methods -- for instance, by always repeating a lie.

  George Santayana

  Confused, Lying, Competition

  George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana”

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• Lawyers are fleas on the hide of human nature.

  Stephen King

  Fleas, Lawyer, Humans

  Stephen King (2011). “Full Dark, No Stars”, p.67, Simon and Schuster

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• Promiscuous reading is necessary to the constituting of human nature. The attempt to keep out evil doctrine by licensing is like the exploit of that gallant man who thought to keep out the crows by shutting the park gate.

  John Milton

  Reading, Men, Evil

  1644 Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

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• The business of philosophy is to circumnavigate human nature.

  Julius Charles Hare

  Philosophy, Humans

  Julius Charles Hare, Augustus William Hare (1861). “Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers: From the Fifth London Ed”, p.434

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• The biggest mischief in the past century has been perpetrated by Rousseau with his doctrine of the goodness of human nature. The mob and the intellectuals derived from it the vision of a Golden Age which would arrive without fail once the noble human race could act according to its whims.

  Jacob Burckhardt

  Past, Race, Vision

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