Best human-nature & conditions Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.”

Ifs Men Humans Kind Dies Existence Conditions Human Nature Objects Refuse Historic

Book:The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt

Source: The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt

“Human nature is almost unbelievably malleable, responding accurately and contrastingly to contrasting cultural conditions.”

Humans Conditions Human Nature Responding

Author:Margaret Mead

“Though business conditions may change, corporations and securities may change, and financial institutions and regulations may change, human nature remains the same. Thus the important and difficult part of sound investment, which hinges upon the investor's own temperament and attitude, is not much affected by the passing years.”

Source: The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel

“Trusting people to be creative and constructive when given more freedom does not imply an overly optimistic belief in the perfectibility of human nature. It is, rather, belief that the inevitable errors and sins of the human condition are far better overcome by individuals working together in an environment of trust and freedom and mutual respect than by individuals working under a multitude of rules, regulations, and restraints imposed upon them by another group of imperfect individuals.”

“Enslave a man and you destroy his ambition, his enterprise, his capacity. In the constitution of human nature, the desire of bettering one's condition is the mainspring of effort. The first touch of slavery snaps this spring.”

Men Firsts Humans Desire Effort Conditions Human Nature Ambition Spring Capacity Constitution Slavery Enterprise Snaps

Book:Slavery

Source: Slavery

“My pessimism (which, by the way, is far from absolute) originated with my despair in the lack of perfection to be found in human nature. I was attempting in my successive books to show the inevitable handicap of the human condition.”

Way Humans Book Shows Found Conditions Human Nature Despair Perfection Absolutes Inevitable Pessimism Human Condition Attempting Handicaps

Author:Stanislaw Lem

“Nor need it cause surprise that things disagreeable to the good man should seem pleasant to some men; for mankind is liable to many corruptions and diseases, and the things in question are not really pleasant, but only pleasant to these particular persons, who are in a condition to think them so.”

Thinking Men Needs Should Persons Seems Causes Conditions Mankind Human Nature Particular Disease Surprise Corruption Pleasant Good Man Liable Disagreeable

Book:The Nicomachean ethics

Source: The Nicomachean ethics

“Our own peculiar human condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh.”

Humans Able Laughing Conditions Human Nature Fit Laughter Laughed Peculiar Human Condition

Author:Michel de Montaigne

“An indiscriminate distrust of human nature is the worst consequence of a miserable condition, whether brought about by innocence or guilt. And though want of suspicion more than want of sense, sometimes leads a man into harm; yet too much suspicion is as bad as too little sense.”

Men Want Humans Littles Sometimes Too Much Worst Conditions Human Nature Consequence Guilt Harm Miserable Innocence Suspicion Distrust

Book:Israel Potter: Works of Melville

Source: Israel Potter: Works of Melville

“What is to be done with people who can't read a Sunday paper without messing it all up?... Show me a Sunday paper which has been left in a condition fit only for kite flying, and I will show you an antisocial and dangerous character who has left it that way.”

People Way Has Beens Done Character Shows Left Conditions Dangerous Human Nature Fit Paper News Flying Sunday Show Me Kites Antisocial

Book:No Poems

Source: No Poems

“Are you appalled at existing conditions? Don't waste your energy trying to change conditions from without! Change the Human Heart from within.”

Trying Humans Heart Energy Conditions Human Nature Waste Human Heart Trying To Change

Author:William J. H. Boetcker

“I have resolved to demonstrate by a certain and undoubted course of argument, or to deduce from the very condition of human nature, not what is new and unheard of, but only such things as agree best with practice.”

Humans Certain Courses Practice Conditions Human Nature Argument Agree Unheard

Author:Baruch Spinoza

“American business men must learn human nature to the point of accepting as necessary the Rabble Rouser of the Right. . . . To get fast action somebody must stir millions to genuine anger over conditions which are adversely affecting their lives.”

Men Life Humans Action Business Accepting Millions Learning Conditions Human Nature Genuine Business Man American Business

Author:Walter B. Pitkin

“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.”

Source: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Madame Bovary is timeless. It is not just about the female condition in France in the 1840s. It's not a simple cautionary tale. Emma is more than a character; she gives us an insight into human nature. With Emma, we are diving into the complexities of Flaubert's psyche.”

Giving Humans Character Simple Conditions Human Nature Female Insight Tales France Complexity Timeless Diving Emma Cautionary Tales

Author:Sophie Barthes

“It is essential to the sanity of mankind that each one should think the other crazy - a condition with which the cynicism of human nature so cordially complies, one could wish it were a concurrence upon a subject more noble.”

Thinking Should Humans Wish Crazy Conditions Subjects Mankind Human Nature Essentials Noble Sanity Cynicism Concurrence

Author:Emily Dickinson

“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.”

Humans Evil Individual Existence Environment Conditions Human Nature Depends Circumstances Morality Propensity

Author:Mikhail Bakunin

“What art should be about,' they will say, 'is revealing exquisite and resonant truths about the human condition.' Well, to be honest - no, it shouldn’t. I mean, it can occasionally, if it wants to; but really, how many penetrating insights to human nature do you need in one lifetime? Two? Three? Once you’ve realised that no one else has a clue what they’re doing, either, and that love can be totally pointless, any further insights into human nature just start getting depressing really.”

Ifs Want Needs Should Humans Wells Mean Art Two Three Conditions Honest Human Nature Lifetime Insight Being Honest Human Condition Depressing Clue Revealing Exquisite Realised Pointless

Author:Caitlin Moran

“The lower animals, on the other hand, must have their bodily structure modified in order to survive under greatly changed conditions. They must be rendered stronger, or acquire more effective teeth or claws, in order to defend themselves from new enemies; or they must be reduced in size so as to escape detection and danger. When they migrate into a colder climate they must become clothed with thicker fur, or have their constitutions altered. If they fail to be thus modified, they will cease to exist.”

Source: The origin of species by means of natural selection: The descent of man and selection in relation to sex

“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.”

“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.”

Source: The Five Thousand Year Leap

“You cannot find it anywhere, because it is located inside you... happiness is your natural state.”

Inspirational States Happiness Natural Conditions Human Nature Findings Happy Location Being Happy Finding Happiness Happy Inspirational

Author:Russell Simmons

“To regard such a positive mental science [psychology] as rising above the sphere of history, and establishing the permanent and unchanging laws of human nature, is therefore possible only to a person who mistakes the transient conditions of a certain historical age for the permanent conditions of human life.”

Humans Persons Age Law Certain Mistake Psychology Conditions Human Nature Regard Historical Permanent Human Life Rising Spheres Rise Above Transient Unchanging

Author:Robin G. Collingwood

“Human nature being what it is, peace must inevitably be a relative condition. The essence of life is struggle and competition, and to that extent perfect peace is an almost meaningless abstraction. Struggle and competition are stimulating, but when they degenerate into conflict it is usually both destructive and disruptive. The aim of political institutions like the United Nations is to draw the line between struggle and conflict and to make it possible for nations to stay on the right side of that line.”

“The price of these failures has been a loss of moral consensus, a greater sense of helplessness about the human condition. ... The intellectual solution to the first dilemma can be achieved by a deeper and more courageous examination of human nature that combines the findings of biology with those of the social sciences.”

“The loss of the religious understanding of the human condition—that Man is a fallen creature for whom virtue is necessary but never fully attainable—is a loss, not a gain, in true sophistication. The secular substitute—the belief in the perfection of life on earth by the endless extension of a choice of pleasures—is not merely callow by comparison but much less realistic in its understanding of human nature.”

Source: Our Culture, What's Left of it: The Mandarins and the Masses

“Human nature is such that humans can turn to God anywhere at any time, and by believing in His care and protection, and thinking in accordance with this belief, fill their hearts with peace and poise, rebuild their bodies into health and strength, and surround themselves with harmonious and joyous conditions.”

Thinking Believe Humans Heart God Body Care Turns Belief Conditions Human Nature Protection Surround Joyous Harmonious Poise Turn To God Health And Strength

Author:Emmet Fox

“To check centralization and usurping of power ... we require a new laissez-faire. The old laissez-faire was founded upon a misapprehension of human nature, an exultation of individuality (in private character often a virtue) to the condition of a political dogma, which destroyed the spirit of community and reduced men to so many equipollent atoms of humanity, without sense of brotherhood or purpose.”

Source: The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot

“Human life is an extension of the principles of nature, and human civilization is a venture extrapolated out of human natures: man and his natural potential are the root of the entire human domain. The great task of all philosophizing is to become competent to interpret and steer the potential developmental forces in human natures and in the human condition, both of which are prodigiously fatalistic.”

“Today the human race is a single twig on the tree of life, a single species on a single planet. Our condition can thus only be described as extremely fragile, endangered by forces of nature currently beyond our control, our own mistakes, and other branches of the wildly blossoming tree itself. Looked at this way, we can then pose the question of the future of humanity on Earth, in the solar system, and in the galaxy from the standpoint of both evolutionary biology and human nature. The conclusion is straightforward: Our choice is to grow, branch, spread and develop, or stagnate and die.”

Source: Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization

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Human Nature Quotes