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Human Nature Quotes

Browse 4693 quotes about Human Nature.

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Human Nature Quotes

“I believe that the basic nature of human beings is gentle and compassionate. It is therefore in our own interest to encourage that nature, to make it live within us, to leave room for it to develop. If on the contrary we use violence, it is as if we voluntarily obstruct the positive side of human nature and prevent its evolution.”

IfsBelieveHumansUseI BelieveSidesInterestHuman BeingsRoomsHealingViolenceHuman NatureEvolutionConflictContraryGentleCompassionateConflict ResolutionConflict Of Interest
Author:Dalai Lama
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“If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people - a very few people, but a few novelists are among them - are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest in against such a search: organized religion, the state, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent.”

PeopleIfsWayTryingHumansLooksDoeStatesIndividualInterestAtheismEconomicConditionsHuman NatureGainsAspectInstitutionsPositive AtheismManageNovelistsOrganizedNew WaysHere And ThereProhibitionOrganized ReligionVested Interests
Author:E. M. Forster
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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.”

IfsThinkingHumansMayTwoDifferentRealReligiousLinesInterestingEnvironmentHuman NatureDevelopmentTraditionRootsRelatedInteractionDifferent TimesReligious Traditions
Author:Werner Heisenberg
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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.”

PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsMenTryingBelieveHumansArtActionBeautifulFallForceSidesSunHuman NatureDevelopmentThousandMen And WomenIdealsStriveWarmDisappointedBeautiful ThingsClosenessGod ExistsWarp
Author:Randolph Bourne
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“You are about to be told one more time that you are America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources?! Have you seen a strip mine? Have you seen a clear cut in the forest? Have you seen a polluted river? Don't ever let them call you a valuable natural resource! They're going to strip mine your soul. They're going to clear cut your best thoughts for the sake of profit unless you learn to resist, because the profit system follows the path of least resistance and following the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked!”

InspirationalSoulStatesAmericaNatureNaturalPathClearCuttingHuman NatureMinesResourcesRiversSakeProfitFollowingValuableSingersForestsResistanceYour SoulUsaMore TimeNatural ResourcesCrookedPath Of Least Resistance
Author:Utah Phillips
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“If idioms are more to be born than to be selected, then the things of life and human nature that a man has grown up with--(not that one man's experience is better than another's, but that it is 'his.')--may give him something better in his substance and manner than an over-long period of superimposed idiomatic education which quite likely doesn't fit his constitution. My father used to say, 'If a poet knows more about a horse than he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the horse may carry him into heaven'”

IfsKnowsMenGivingHumansMayLongDoeMightUsedFatherHeavenBornHuman NaturePoetPeriodsFitConstitutionHorseSticksSubstanceOne ManSomething BetterSelectedIdiom
Author:Charles Ives
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“According to how gifted we are, we are all given a large or small key to this treasury of wonders. I have been blessed with a small key to the world of the young. It's a place where good and evil are clearly stamped. It's a place where the better part of human nature triumphs over tragedies, and where innocence rides high. It is a great pleasure to write there, because the young have what the rest of us only envy, and that is a belief in goodness and perpetual hope.”

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Author:Rosemary Wells
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“There is a prayer intended to give strength to people faced with circumstances they don’t want to accept. The power of the prayer comes from it's insight into human nature. Because so many of us rage against the hand that life has dealt us. Because so many of us are cowardly. And afraid to stand up for what is right. Because so many of us give into despair when faced with an impossible choice. The good news for those who utter these words is that God will hear you and answer your prayer. The bad news is that sometimes the answer is no.”

PeopleWantGivingHumansSometimesHandsChoicesPrayerAnswersAcceptingImpossibleHuman NatureCircumstancesDespairNewsInsightRageGods WillGood NewsOur PrayersCowardlyBad News
Author:Mary Alice
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“Realism sets itself at work to consider characters and events which are apparently the most ordinary and uninteresting, in order to extract from these their full value and true meaning. It would apprehend in all particulars the connection between the familiar and the extraordinary, and the seen and unseen of human nature.”

HumansCharacterValuesOrderEventsHuman NatureOrdinaryConnectionsExtraordinaryFamiliarRealismUnseenTrue MeaningSeen And Unseen
Author:George Parsons Lathrop
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“Legal systems, at both the national and international level, are therefore required to recognize, guarantee and protect religious freedom, which is a right intrinsically inherent in human nature, in man's dignity as a free being, and is also an indicator of a healthy democracy and cone of the main sources of the legitimacy of the State. Religious freedom ... favors the development of relationships of mutual respect between the different Confessions and their healthy collaboration with the State and political society, without confusion of roles and without antagonism.”

MenHumansDifferentStatesPoliticalReligiousLevelsRolesDemocracyHuman NatureSourceDevelopmentHealthyProtectDignityInternationalFavorsConfusionGuaranteesMutualCollaborationConfessionInherentReligious FreedomBeing FreeLegitimacyMutual RespectLegal SystemIndicatorsAntagonismCones
Author:Pope Francis
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“Anyone who says the American Constitution is obsolete just because social and economic conditions have changed does not understand the real genius of the Constitution. It was designed to control something which has not changed and will not change—namely, human nature.”

HumansDoeRealLawPoliticalSocialChangeEconomicConditionsHuman NatureChangedGeniusConstitutionConservativeUsaObsoleteLack Of UnderstandingAmerican ConstitutionReal Genius
Book:The Five Thousand Year Leap
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“Creating new people, by having babies, is so much a part of human life that it is rarely thought even to require a justification. Indeed, most people do not even think about whether they should or should not make a baby. They just make one. In other words, procreation is usually the consequence of sex rather than the result of a decision to bring people into existence. Those who do indeed decide to have a child might do so for any number of reasons, but among these reasons cannot be the interests of the potential child. One can never have a child for that child’s sake.”

PeopleThinkingLifeShouldHumansChildrenReasonMightSexInterestDecisionResultsNumbersExistenceHuman NatureBabyBirthCreatingConsequenceParentingSakeHuman LifeJustificationBeing A ParentHaving A BabyProcreation
Book:Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence
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“If nonsatiety were the natural state of human nature then aggressive want-stimulating advertising would not be necessary, nor would the barrage of novelty aimed at promoting dissatisfaction with last year's model. The system attempts to remake people to fit its own presuppositions. If people's wants are not naturally insatiable we must make them so, in order to keep the system going.”

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Author:Herman E. Daly
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“Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul; and thus it may be looked on as weakness in the composition of human nature. But if we consider the frequent relieves we receive from it and how often it breaks the gloom which is apt to depress the mind and damp our spirits, with transient, unexpected gleams of joy, one would take care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life.”

IfsLifeMindHumansKindMaySoulCareLastsJoySpiritGrowsCausesPleasureBreakWiseHuman NatureLaughterWeaknessTake CareUnexpectedFacultyDepressingCompositionGloomTransientGleamDissolutionDampPleasures Of Life
Author:Malcolm De Chazal
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“Such is the grasping tendency of the human heart, that it must have a something to lay hold of - and which, if wrested away without the substitution of another something in its place, would leave a void and a vacancy as painful to the mind, as hunger is to the natural system.... The heart must have something to cling to.”

IfsMindHumansHeartNaturalHuman NatureLaysHungerPainfulTendenciesMinistersProfessorsVoidHuman HeartClingingGraspingSubstitutionVacancy
Book:Sermons: Select Works
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“Economic activity is no longer an adversarial contest between embattled sellers and buyers "In the distributed economy, where collaboration trumps competition, inclusivity replaces exclusivity and transparency and openness to others becomes essential to the new way of conducting business, empathic sensibility has room to breathe and thrive. It is no longer so constrained by hierarchies, boundaries of exclusion, and a concept of human nature that places acquisitiveness, self-interest, and utility at the center of the human experience."”

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Author:Jeremy Rifkin
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