Propensity Quotes - Page 3

There is certainly a universal and unconscious propensity to impose a rhythm even when one hears a series of identical sounds at constant intervals... We tend to hear the sound of a digital clock, for example, as "tick-tock, tick-tock" - even though it is actually "tick tick, tick tick.

Oliver Sacks

Sound, Example, Digital

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Hackberry Holland's greatest fear was his fellow man's propensity to act collectively, in militaristic lockstep, under the banner of God and country. Mobs did not rush across town to do good deeds, and in Hackberry's view, there was no more odious taint on any social or political endeavor than universal approval.

James Lee Burke

Country, Men, Greatest Fear

James Lee Burke (2011). “The Glass Rainbow: A Dave Robicheaux Novel”, p.540, Simon and Schuster

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For there is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views and their works, the measure of excellence in every thing whatsoever

Edmund Burke

Views, Excellence, Mankind

Edmund Burke (1824). “A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”, p.102

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It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the power of faith is nobler than the power of doubt; and that there is a celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which belongs to honest and noble natures.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Maturity, Discovery, Years

Harriet Beecher Stowe (2010). “The Pearl of Orr's Island”, p.249, Applewood Books

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Ivy Hisselpenny was the unfortunate victim of circumstances that dictated she be only-just-pretty, only-just-wealthy, and possessed of a terrible propensity for wearing extremely silly hats.

Gail Carriger

Silly, Ivy, Hats

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Luke moved as silently as fog, while Maryse's heels sounded like gunshots on the marble floor. Clary wondered if Isabelle's propensity for unsuitable footwear was genetic.

Cassandra Clare

Fog, Gunshots, Footwear

Cassandra Clare (2011). “City of Fallen Angels”, p.128, Simon and Schuster

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Propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means.

Charlotte Bronte

Mean, Principles

Charlotte Bronte (2013). “Jane Eyre”, p.446, Simon and Schuster

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It seems priggish or pollyannaish to deny that my intention in writing the work was to titillate the nastier propensities of my readers. My own healthy inheritance of original sin comes out in the book and I enjoyed raping and ripping by proxy. It is the novelist’s innate cowardice that makes him depute to imaginary personalities the sins that he is too cautious to commit for himself.

Anthony Burgess

Book, Writing, Personality

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There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome." "And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody." "And yours," he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them.

Jane Austen

Hate, Believe, Evil

Jane Austen (2006). “The Complete Novels: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.303, Penguin

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...human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their ignorance of the misuse.

Robert Wright

Ignorance, Moral, Equipment

Robert Wright (2010). “The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology”, p.21, Vintage

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Human nature is so constituted that the propensity for evil is always intensified by external circumstances, and the morality of the individual depends much more on the conditions of his existence and the environment in which he lives than on his own will.

Mikhail Bakunin

Evil, Morality, Human Nature

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If there were no internal propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level - indeed in the molecule itself - it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up, with us, in hominized form... Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Love, Life, Molecules

"The Phenomenon of Man". Book by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 1959.

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His gaze narrowed and she could see his hands twitching again like he’d love nothing more than to throttle her. She was beginning to think it was an affliction of his. Did he go around wanting to choke the life out of everyone or was she special in that regard? “I’m afraid ’tis an urge that is entirely original to you,” the laird barked. She clamped her mouth shut and closed her eyes. Mother Serenity had vowed one day Mairin would regret her propensity to blurt out her least little thought. Today just might be that day.

Maya Banks

Mother, Regret, Eye

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And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody." "And yours," he replied with a smile, "is willfully to misunderstand them.

Jane Austen

Hate, Defects

Jane Austen (2015). “Pride and Prejudice”, p.76, BoD – Books on Demand

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The love of money as a possession-as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life-will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease

John Maynard Keynes

Life, Mean, Reality

Essays in Persuasion pt. 5 (1931)

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Our intelligence is imperfect, surely, and newly arisen; the ease with which it can be sweet-talked, overwhelmed, or subverted by other hardwired propensities - sometimes themselves disguised as the cool light of reason - is worrisome.

Carl Sagan

Sweet, Truth, Light

Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors”, p.407, Ballantine Books

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And here we come to the vital distinction between the advocacy of temperance and the advocacy of prohibition. Temperance and self-control are convertible terms. Prohibition, or that which it implies, is the direct negation of the term self-control. In order to save the small percentage of men who are too weak to resist their animal desires, it aims to put chains on every man, the weak and the strong alike. And if this is proper in one respect, why not in all respects? Yet, what would one think of a proposition to keep all men locked up because a certain number have a propensity to steal?

Felix Mendelssohn

Strong, War, Animal

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Complete non-violence is complete absence of ill-will against all that lives. It therefore embraces even sub-human life, not excluding noxious insects and beasts. They have not been created to feed our destructive propensities. If we only knew the mind of the Creator, we should find their proper place in His creation.

Mahatma Gandhi

Philosophical, Animal, Ill Will

Mahatma Gandhi (1943). “The Wisdom of Gandhi in His Own Words”

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Before my marriage, I didn’t think about all the obligations that were awaiting me. My experience has proved useful and I think that I have a natural propensity to feel compassion for people and their problems.

Grace Kelly

Thinking, Compassion, People

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Now I have demonstrated, that the convolutions of the brain are nothing but the peripheric expansion of the bundles of which it is composed; consequently the convolutions of the brain must be recognized as the parts in which the instincts, sentiments, propensities are exercised; and, in general the moral and intellectual forces.

Franz Joseph Gall

Intellectual, Brain, Expansion

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The necessity of a senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies, to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders, into intemperate and pernicious resolutions.

James Madison

Passion, Yield, Leader

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2007). “The Federalist Papers”, p.474, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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Senator, we are groping for understanding, the knowledge you assume I possess doesn't exist' - 'The only effective regulation lies in the propensity of customers to choose alternatives, of investors to move their funds elsewhere and of labour to acquire technical skills' - 'Senator, if I seem clear to you, you must have misunderstood me' - 'Unfortunately, Senator, nobody knows where the next innovative idea is coming from. Political decisions are never random and will always lose out to innovative alternatives

Alan Greenspan

Lying, Moving, Ignorance

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And it is not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities.

John Stuart Mill

Police, Humanity, Liberty

John Stuart Mill (2012). “On Liberty”, p.71, Courier Corporation

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He who harbors hatred and bitterness injures himself far more than the one towards whom he manifests these evil propensities.

David O. McKay

Anger, Evil, Hatred

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You know, my boy, he said, it's impossible to love men such as they are. And yet we must. So try to do good to men by doing violence to your feelings, holding your nose, and shutting your eyes, especially shutting your eyes. Endure their villainy without anger, as much as possible; try to remember that you're a man too. For, if you're even a little above average intelligence, you'll have the propensity to judge people severely. Men are vile by nature and they'd rather love out of fear. Don't give in to such love: despise it always.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Love, Eye, Boys

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