Propensity Quotes - Page 4

• The first and probably most fundamental aspect of this crisis is that we are now close to the commodification of everything. That is, historical capitalism is in crisis precisely because, in pursuing the endless accumulation of capital, it is beginning to approximate that state of being Adam Smith asserted was 'natural' to man but which has never historically existed. The 'propensity [of humanity] to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another' has entered into domains and zones previously untouched, and the pressure to expand commodification is relatively unchecked.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Men, Humanity, Historical

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• You mean am I for it or against it? You think this is a key question I'm going to be asked on Vega, and you want to make sure I give the right answer? Okay. Overpopulation is why I'm in favor of homosexuality and a celibate clergy. A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

  Carl Sagan

  Mean, Thinking, Vegas

  Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.243, Simon and Schuster

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• Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. It is a self-existent principle inherent in the divine nature and appears to us as a self-caused propensity to pity the wretched, spare the guilty, welcome the outcast, and bring into favor those who were before under just disapprobation. Its use to us sinful men is to save us and make us sit together in heavenly places to demonstrate to the ages the exceeding riches of God's kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Jesus, Kindness, Men

  Aiden Wilson Tozer (1975). “The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God: Their Meaning in the Christian Life”

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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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• The propensity to intellectualize is itself both essential and dangerous. I think in our modern world we are much more aware of its essential character than of its dangers, and that is why I think of it as being an expression of transcendence.

  Talal Asad

  Character, Thinking, Expression

  "Do Muslims Belong in the West? An Interview with Talal Asad". Interview with Hasan Azad, www.eutopiainstitute.org. February 13, 2015.

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• I have a natural propensity to work on big piles of poop.

  Robert Pattinson

  Poop, Natural, Bigs

  Source: www.moviesonline.ca

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• Tech executives have historically been owners of significant portions of their companies' stock so there is a propensity for them to diversify as a rule.

  David Coleman

  Technology, Significant, Owners

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• The many instances of forged miracles, and prophecies, and supernatural events, which, in all ages, have either been detected by contrary evidence, or which detect themselves by their absurdity, prove sufficiently the strong propensity of mankind to the extraordinary and marvellous, and ought reasonably to begat a suspicion against all relations of this kind.

  David Hume

  Religious, Strong, Miracle

  David Hume (1861). “An Essay on Miracles. No. 10 of the “Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding.””, p.10

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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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• Physicians mend or end us, Secundum artem; but although we sneer - In health - when ill we call them to attend us, Without the least propensity to jeer

  Lord Byron

  Medicine, Physicians, Ends

  Lord Byron (2013). “Don Juan”, p.259, Simon and Schuster

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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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• St. Augustine teaches us that there is in each man a Serpent, an Eve, and an Adam. Our senses and natural propensities are the Serpent; the excitable desire is the Eve; and reason is the Adam. Our nature tempts us perpetually; criminal desire is often excited; but sin is not completed till reason consents.

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Temptation, Desire

  Blaise Pascal (1849). “Thoughts of Blaise Pascal”, p.371

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• If there was the same propensity in mankind for investigating the motives, as there is for censuring the conduct, of public characters, it would be found that the censure so freely bestowed is oftentimes unmerited and uncharitable.

  George Washington

  Character, Would Be, Found

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1839). “The Writings of George Washington: pt. IV. Letters official and private, from the beginning of his presidency to the end of his life: (v. 10) May, 1789-November, 1794. (v. 11) November, 1794-December, 1799”, p.97

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• Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities his preeminence over them simply and solely in the number and in the fantastic and unnecessary character of his wants, physical, moral, aesthetic, and intellectual. Had his whole life not been a quest for the superfluous, he would never have established himself as inexpugnably as he has done in the necessary.

  William James

  Lying, Character, Men

  William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.83, 谷月社

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• The propensity to play is situated in very ancient regions of the brain. Rats that have had their neocortex removed still engage in normal play.

  Jaak Panksepp

  Play, Brain, Rats

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• It is surely one of the strangest of our propensities to mark out those we love best for the worst usage; yet we do, all of us. We can take any freedom with a friend; we stand on no ceremony with a friend.

  Samuel Laman Blanchard

  Love Is, Usage, Mark

  "Sketches from Life, Vol. 1-2". Book by Laman Blanchard, Wiley & Putnam, "That Good Wine Needs No Bush", 1846.

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• Thousands of years people have taken drugs, whether it's alcohol, which was invented about 5,000 years ago. People have been using that. And all kinds of marijuana and all these things, tobacco. So all these drugs have been - it seems to be the propensity of human beings to want to use them.

  Mick Jagger

  Taken, Marijuana, Years

  Interview with Larry King, edition.cnn.com. May 18, 2010.

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• It is in the middle classes of society that all the finest feeling, and the most amiable propensities of our nature do principally nourish and abound. For the good opinion of our fellow-men is the strongest though not the purest motive to virtue. The privations of poverty render us too cold and callous, and the privileges of property too arrogant and confidential, to feel; the first places us beneath the influence of opinion--the second, above it.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Class, Feelings

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• Giving free advice is a sad waste of effort. In the first place, no man will act upon it unless he is already inclined to do so. Secondly, when a man lays his case before you, the idea that he is asking your advice is a polite fabrication. He merely is suggesting that he is doing so, while as a fact his real object is to acquaint you with his personal activity. He wants to talk to somebody, being a natural gossip or gadder, and he plays upon your propensity for "giving advice" in order to get an audience.

  William H. McMaster

  Real, Men, Order

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• There are two very natural propensities which we may distinguish in the most virtuous and liberal dispositions, the love of pleasure and the love of action. If the former is refined by art and learning, improved by the charms of social intercourse, and corrected by a just regard to economy, to health, and to reputation, it is productive of the greatest part of the happiness of private life.

  Edward Gibbon

  Art, Two, History

  Edward Gibbon (2015). “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire V1: the History Focus”, p.348, 谷月社

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• There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.

  Edward Gibbon

  Strong, History, Evil

  Edward Gibbon (2000). “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II: A.D. 395 to A.D. 1185 (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.253, Modern Library

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