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Human Nature Quotes

Browse 4693 quotes about Human Nature.

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Human Nature Quotes

“Just as the commander of an army pitches his camp, studies the strength and defenses of a fortress, and then attacks it on its weakest side, in like manner, the enemy of our human nature studies from all sides our theological, cardinal, and moral virtues. Wherever he finds us weakest and most in need regarding our eternal salvation, he attacks and tries to take us by storm.”

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Author:Ignatius of Loyola
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“Many of the obstacles for change which have been attributed to human nature are in fact due to the inertia of institutions and to the voluntary desire of powerful classes to maintain the existing status.”

HumansHas BeensFactsDesirePowerfulClassHuman NatureInstitutionsObstaclesDuesInertia
Book:The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925 - 1953: 1931-1932, Essays, Reviews, and Miscellany
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“Religion and science, for example, are often though to be opponents, but as I have shown, the insights of ancient religions and of modern science are both needed to reach a full understanding of human nature and the conditions of human satisfaction. The ancients may have known little about biology, chemistry, physics, but many were good psychologists.”

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Book:The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
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“The classic theology of my tradition comes from the French Renaissance. [William] Shakespeare was born in 1564, the year [John] Calvin died, and that theology was very influential in England in his lifetime. I think Shakespeare was attentive to questions raised by it, about human nature, history, reality itself. I find the two literatures to be mutually illuminating.”

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Author:Marilynne Robinson
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“A struggle for liberty is in itself respectable and glorious. . . . When conducted with magnanimity, justice and humanity, it ought to command the admiration of every friend to human nature. But if sullied by crimes and extravagancies, it loses its respectability.”

IfsHumansHumanityLosesJusticeLibertyStruggleHuman NatureCrimeOughtCommandGloriousAdmirationRespectableRespectabilityMagnanimity
Book:Citizen Hamilton: The Wit and Wisdom of an American Founder
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“I think most generations tend to learn the lesson of war the hard way. There is a deep attraction to the empowerment. Freud is right: societies either become locked in a collective embrace of Eros, as individuals do, or a collective embrace of Thanatos, the death instinct. They swing between the two. The notion that societies are naturally prone toward self-preservation is wrong. Self-annihilation can be deeply addictive, intoxicating, enticing. So I take a darker view of human nature, that war is probably always going to be with us. I think history bears me out.”

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Author:Chris Hedges
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“Most people believe they know how they themselves think, how others think too, and even how institutions evolve. But they are wrong. Their understanding is based on folk psychology, the grasp of human nature by common sense ¾ defined (by Einstein) as everything learned to the age of 18 ¾ shot through with misconceptions, and only slightly advanced over ideas employed by the Greek philosophers”

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Author:E. O. Wilson
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“Anyone living, especially your peers, is a threat. You're judging them, they're judging you. This sort of criticism is as close to human nature as you can get. That can be a good thing sometimes. Jealously, rancor, competition, those can be good things in art. But it mostly puts you in a dangerous and disadvantageous position, and one that just takes away from you so much.”

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Author:Raymond Pettibon
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“Dawn Of The Dead is about how we're just a country cannibalizing itself, turning into one shopping mall, and everyone at the mall is just brain-dead, wandering around. Capitalism gone awry, and the worst parts of human nature coming out. All these different things that people read into the films that are all there, very strong anti-Bush sentiments that went into making those films. It's great. I like it when people get it the second or third time, when someone else points it out to them. They don't realize it's been there all along. Those are my favorite movies.”

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Author:Eli Roth
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“Before I write anything, before I create any assumption in my mind about what it's like to be in that world, I go out there first. I'm very drawn to darkness and light, very drawn to cop drama, because there are very few places besides war and murder and a homicide investigation where you see the extremes of human nature - the darkest crevices and cracks in what people do to one another.”

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Author:Veena Sud
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“Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.”

IfsKnowsMenCharacterStreetsHuman NatureHonorIntegrityMetsReputationHypocrisyGood CharacterGreat CharacterIntegrity And CharacterIntegrity CharacterGood ReputationHonor And IntegrityBuilding CharacterMan Of IntegrityPersonality FlawsCharacter And ReputationCharacter Of A ManImage And Reputation
Book:Contemplations: Being Several Short Essays Helpful Sermonettes, Epigrams and Orphic Sayings
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“We liked the idea that it was a low-tech future. But everything always repeats the past. If you look today and look at something in the middle east where you got people getting beheaded it's like the crusades with Twitter. It's crazy, human nature does the same thing. In a way, even though you're in the future people wanted order so this sort of system rose up.”

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Author:Alfred Gough
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“It is my strong conviction that a realist conception of human nature should be made a servant of an ethic of progressive justice and should not be made into a bastion of conservatism, particularly a conservatism which defends unjust privileges.”

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Book:Man's Nature and His Communities: Essays on the Dynamics and Enigmas of Man's Personal and Social Existence
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“In work we act under the predominant motive of external, rational necessities; in pleasure, under the predominant motive of other, equally general necessities of human nature. Rest or recreation is the element in which the personality seeks to renew its strength from these stimuli that exhaust the reserve of human resources. It's an element introduced into life by the person himself.”

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Book:What Is to Be Done?
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