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Human Actions Quotes

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Human Actions Quotes

“The notion that a society could be regulated entirely by market forces is a utopian fantasy: an impossible dream generated by imagining what the world would be like if everyone's behavior was utterly consistent with some abstract moral ideal-in this case, economic theories that assume all human action is based on calculating, systematic, (but scrupulously law-abiding), greed.”

IfsWorldHumansDreamWould BeActionLawForceMoralCasesFantasyImpossibleEconomicTheoryBehaviorIdealsAssumingNotionGreedLibertarianAbstractConsistentAbidingSystematicUtopianCalculatingHuman ActionsEconomic TheoryImpossible Dream
Author:David Graeber
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“Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test.”

MenHumansMayArtActionGraceHonorFutureQuietGainsTestsSightRegardMakersAttributesMajestyMagnificenceHuman Actions
Book:The seven lamps of architecture
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“Where intellectuals have played a role in history, it has not been so much by whispering words of advice into the ears of political overlords as by contributing to the vast and powerful currents of conceptions and misconceptions that sweep human action along.”

HumansActionPoliticalPowerfulRolesSocietyAdviceEarsCurrentsConceptionMisconceptionWhisperingContributingHuman ActionsWords Of Advice
Book:A Conflict of Visions: Idealogical Origins of Political Struggles
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“There is in the universe something for the description and analysis of which the natural sciences cannot contribute anything. There are events beyond the range of those events that the procedures of the natural sciences are fit to observe and describe. There is human action.”

HumansActionUniverseNaturalSocietyEventsFitRangeAnalysisDescriptionProceduresNatural ScienceHuman Actions
Book:The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method
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“I have discovered a universal rule which seems to apply more than any other in all human actions or words: namely, to steer away from affectation at all costs, as if it were a rough and dangerous reef, and (to use perhaps a novel word for it) to practise in all things a certain nonchalance [sprezzatura] which conceals all artistry and makes whatever one says or does seem uncontrived and effortless.”

IfsHumansDoeUseSeemsActionCertainNovelDangerousCostAll ThingsUniversalRoughSteersArtistryEffortlessPractiseReefsHuman ActionsNonchalance
Author:Baldassare Castiglione
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“The world looks with some awe upon a man who appears unconcernedly indifferent to home, money, comfort, rank, or even power and fame. The world feels not without a certain apprehension, that here is someone outside its jurisdiction; someone before whom its allurements may be spread in vain; some one strangely enfranchised, untamed, untrammelled by convention, moving independent of the ordinary currents of human action.”

MenWorldFeelsHumansLooksMayHomeActionMovingCertainComfortFameOrdinaryIndependentIndependenceCurrentsSpreadVainAweConventionsIndifferentApprehensionHuman ActionsJurisdictionUntamed
Book:Never Give In!: Winston Churchill's Speeches
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“We can learn from history how past generations thought and acted, how they responded to the demands of their time and how they solved their problems. We can learn by analogy, not by example, for our circumstances will always be different than theirs were. The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone. They foreclose the possibility of making other choices and thus they determine future events.”

HumansMadeDifferentProblemActionPastCertainChoicesKnowledgeTeachGenerationsEventsExamplePossibilityCircumstancesDemandConsequenceClimate ChangeDetermineUndoneAnalogiesHuman ActionsFuture EventsPast GenerationsActions Have Consequences
Book:Why History Matters: Life and Thought
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“In every civilization, life grows easier. Men grow lazier in consequence. We have a picture of what happened to the individual Greek. (I cannot look at history, or at any human action, except as I look at the individual.) The Greeks had good food, good witty talk, pleasant dinner parties; and they were content. When the individual man had reached that condition in Athens, when the thought not of giving to the state but of what the state could give to him, Athens' freedom was doomed.”

MenGivingHumansLooksStatesActionIndividualGrowsPartyHappenedConditionsEasierCivilizationConsequenceWittyDinnerGreekPleasantDoomedEntitlementGood FoodDinner PartyAthensHuman Actions
Author:Edith Hamilton
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“It would be a mistake to believe that one could come to any substantive understanding of politics by discussing abstractly the good, the right, the true, or the rational in complete abstraction from the way in which these items figure in the motivationally active parts of the human psyche, and particularly in abstraction from the way in which they impinge, even if indirectly, on human action.”

IfsWayBelieveHumansWould BeActionUnderstandingMistakeFiguresActiveRationalAbstractionItemsDiscussingHuman ActionsHuman Psyche
Book:Philosophy and Real Politics
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“In some central and important cases, ... the existence of specific power relations in the society will produce an appearance of a particular kind. Certain features of the society that are merely local and contingent, and maintained in existence only by the continual exercise of power, will come to seem as if they were universal, necessary, invariant, or natural features of all forms of human social life, or as if they arose spontaneously and uncoercedly by free human action.”

IfsHumansKindImportantSeemsActionFormCertainSocialNaturalExistenceCasesProduceParticularExerciseUniversalRelationAppearanceLocalsFeaturesSocial LifeHuman Actions
Book:Philosophy and Real Politics
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“Now that Stevenson is dead I can think of but one English- speaking author who is really keeping his self-respect and sticking forperfection. Of course I refer to that mighty master of language and keen student of human actions and motives, Henry James.”

ThinkingHumansI CanSelfActionCoursesLanguageStudentsMastersMotiveSelf RespectHuman ActionsEnglish Speaking
Book:A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays
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“He who has been impoverished for a long timewho has long stood before the door of the mighty in darkness and begged for alms,has filled his heart with bitterness so that it resembles a sponge full of gall; he knows about the injustice and folly of all human action and sometimes his lips tremble with rage and a stifled scream.”

KnowsHumansHeartLongHas BeensSometimesActionDarknessDoorsFilledInjusticeLipsRageFollyBitternessScreamSpongesAlmsHuman Actions
Author:Stefan Zweig
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“Preservation of the environment, promotion of sustainable development and particular attention to climate change are matters of grave concern for the entire human family. No nation or business sector can ignore the ethical implications present in all economic and social development. With increasing clarity scientific research demonstrates that the impact of human actions in any one place or region can have worldwide effects.”

HumansMatterActionNationsSocialAttentionEnvironmentEconomicEffectsParticularDevelopmentResearchConcernImpactClimateEnvironmentalClimate ChangeGravesClarityRegionsEthicalSustainabilityPreservationPromotionImplicationsSustainable DevelopmentSocial DevelopmentScientific ResearchHuman ActionsHuman Family
Author:Pope Benedict XVI
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“For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous. Acting upon a personal desire, whispering a hidden longing, revealing your true feelings - all the human actions we think of as essential to a character - had be censored by the self lest they be punished by the state.”

ThinkingHumansSelfStatesCharacterFeelingsActionDesireGrowthActingDangerousEssentialsLongingRevealingSpontaneityWhisperingHuman ActionsCensoredTrue FeelingsPersonal DesireChange Growth
Author:Adam Johnson
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“Tis impossible to judge with much Præcision of the true Motives and Qualities of human Actions, or of the Propriety of Rules contrived to govern them, without considering with like Attention, all the Passions, Appetites, Affections in Nature from which they flow. An intimate Knowledge therefore of the intellectual and moral World is the sole foundation on which a stable structure of Knowledge can be erected.”

WorldHumansActionPassionAttentionQualityMoralImpossibleJudgingIntellectualFlowFoundationStructureAffectionIntimateMotiveAppetiteStableSoleConsideringProprietyHuman Actions
Book:The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Diary, with passages from an autobiography. Notes of debates in the Continental Congress, in 1775 and 1776. Autobiography
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“I infer that God's decrees, and the necessity of event flowing thence, neither destroy the true free-agency of men, nor render the commission of sin a jot less heinous. They neither force the human will, nor extenuate the evil of human actions. Predestination, foreknowledge, and providence, only secure the event, and render it certainly future, in a way and manner (incomprehensibly indeed by us; but) perfectly consistent with the nature of second causes.”

MenWayHumansActionEvilForceCausesSinEventsSecureAgencyConsistentProvidenceDecreePredestinationHuman ActionsHuman WillFree Agency
Author:Augustus Toplady
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“A lot of times when I ask people what their apocalyptic fantasy life is like, they'll immediately say something like, "Oh, what I think is going to kill us is climate change or World War IV," and that's not what I'm interested in at all. The point is not about winning a bet about what's going to happen. The point is about the human action of examining the possibility, the kind of obsessive imagining about it.”

PeopleThinkingWorldHumansKindWarHappensActionLife IsAsksWinningFantasyPossibilityClimateClimate ChangeWar Of The WorldsWorld War ILife Is LikeObsessiveExaminingApocalypticHuman ActionsFantasy Life
Author:Lucy Corin
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“As for climate change, it's by now widely accepted by the scientific community that we have entered a new geological era, the Anthropocene, in which the Earth's climate is being radically modified by human action, creating a very different planet, one that may not be able to sustain organized human life in anything like a form we would want to tolerate.”

WantHumansMayDifferentAbleActionEarthFormCommunityPlanetsCreatingClimateClimate ChangeAcceptedErasHuman LifeOrganizedTolerateHuman Actions
Author:Noam Chomsky
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