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Human Nature Quotes

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Human Nature Quotes

“These various habits of thought, or habitual expressions of life, are all phases of the single life sequence of the individual; therefore a habit formed in response to a given stimulus will necessarily affect the character of the response made to other stimuli. A modification of human nature at any one point is a modification of human nature as a whole.”

Humans Made Whole Character Individual Given Human Nature Expression Habit Response Various Phases Sequence Stimulus Habitual Single Life Modification

Book:BUSINESS & ECONOMICS Premium Collection: 25+ Titles in One Volume: The Theory of Business Enterprise, The Higher Learning in America, The Vested Interests and the Common Man, On the Nature of Capital…: The Theory of the Leisure Class, The Beginning of Ownership, The Preconceptions of Economic Science, The Industrial System and the Captains of Industry, The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx…

Source: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS Premium Collection: 25+ Titles in One Volume: The Theory of Business Enterprise, The Higher Learning in America, The Vested Interests and the Common Man, On the Nature of Capital…: The Theory of the Leisure Class, The Beginning of Ownership, The Preconceptions of Economic Science, The Industrial System and the Captains of Industry, The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx…

“A religious creed differs from a scientific theory in claiming to embody eternal and absolutely certain truth, whereas science is always tentative, expecting that modification in its present theories will sooner or later be found necessary, and aware that its method is one which is logically incapable of arriving at a complete and final demonstration.”

“Whatever their limitations, Freud and Marx developed complex and subtle theories of human nature grounded in their observation of individual and social behavior. The crackpot rationalism of free-market economics merely relies on an abstract model of how people "must" behave.”

“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.”

“Of course there are individual racists in America. Sadly that's true. And sadly that will always be true. It's true in this country, it will be true because it's human nature.”

Humans Country America Courses Individual Human Nature Being True Racist

Author:Monica Crowley

“Evolution has no moral direction. An evolutionary understanding of human nature can explain the differing intuitions we have when we are faced with an individual rather than with a mass of people, or with people close to us rather than with those far away, but it does not justify those feelings.”

People Humans Doe Feelings Individual Understanding Moral Human Nature Evolution Mass Intuition Justify Far Away

Book:The Life You Can Save: How to play your part in ending world poverty

Source: The Life You Can Save: How to play your part in ending world poverty

“If the head is lost, all that perishes is the individual; if the balls are lost, all of human nature perishes.”

Ifs Humans Humanity Individual Lost Sex Human Nature Balls

Author:Francois Rabelais

“It is open to question whether the highly individualized characters we find in Shakespeare are perhaps not detrimental to the dramatic effect. The human being disappears to the same degree as the individual emerges.”

Humans Character Individual Human Beings Effects Human Nature Drama Degrees Disappear Dramatic Individualism Detrimental

Author:Franz Grillparzer

“In contrast to our own social environment which brings out different aspects of human nature and often demonstrated that behavior which occurs almost invariably in individuals within our society is nevertheless due not to original nature but to social environment; and a homogeneous and simple development of the individual may be studied.”

Humans May Different Individual Social Simple Environment Human Nature Development Behavior Aspect Originals Dues Our Society Contrast Nevertheless Homogeneous Social Environment

Book:Growing Up in New Guinea: A Comparative Study of Primitive Education

Source: Growing Up in New Guinea: A Comparative Study of Primitive Education

“[T]he liberty, the unalienable, indefeasible rights of men, the honor and dignity of human nature, the grandeur and glory of the public, and the universal happiness of individuals, were never so skillfully and successfully consulted as in that most excellent monument of human art, the common law of England.”

Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations

“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.”

“I think if I were reading to a grandchild, I might read Tolstoy's War and Peace. They would learn about Russia, they would learn about history, they would learn about human nature. They would learn about, "Can the individual make a difference or is it great forces?" Tolstoy is always battling with those large issues. Mostly, a whole world would come alive for them through that book.”

Ifs Thinking World Humans Book War Whole Might Reading Individual Force Differences Issues Alive Human Nature Russia Whole World Making A Difference Grandchildren

Author:Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment.”

Self Individual Human Nature Identity Integrity Individuality Boundaries Accomplishment Hypocrisy Cybernetics Psycho Cybernetics

Book:Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded

Source: Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded

“During my eighty-seven years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.”

Source: Baruch: My own story

“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

“The Idols of Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.”

Men Mind Humans Wells Universe Individual Understanding Race Human Nature Perception Mirrors Foundation Contrary Rays Idols Receiving Tribes Assertion Mingling

Book:New Atlantis and The Great Instauration

Source: New Atlantis and The Great Instauration

“School was more than academics; an education prepared you for the humdrum of real life: working with others, tempering one's personality to assimilate with the group but without losing your individual identity, understading the factors of logic, reasoning, and debate. For a person - vampire or human - to succeed in the world, unlocking the mysteries of the universe was insufficient. One would also need to grasp the mysteries of human nature.”

Source: The Van Alen Legacy: Number 4 in series

“A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations.”

Way Facts Individual Given Social Acting Human Nature Exercise Capable Independent Fixed Manifestation Constraints

Author:Emile Durkheim

“Society is not a mere sum of individuals. Rather, the system formed by their association represents a specific reality which has its own characteristics... The group thinks, feels, and acts quite differently from the way in which its members would were they isolated. If, then, we begin with the individual, we shall be able to understand nothing of what takes place in the group.”

Ifs Thinking Way Feels Reality Able Individual Groups Human Nature Members Mere Characteristics Association Isolated If Then

Author:Emile Durkheim

“No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause; because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time.”

Men Reason Body Together Found Individual Causes Loses Religious Party Numbers Moral Greater Violence Human Nature Judging Equal Injustice Motive Proportion Adequate Efficacy

Author:James Madison

“If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price.”

People Ifs Men Years Looks Has Beens Done Earth Individual Energy Answers Pay Greater Land Human Nature Genius Dignity Available Assured Unwilling Unleashed

Author:Ronald Reagan

“Photography, fortunately, to me has not only been a profession but also a contact between people - to understand human nature and record, if possible, the best in each individual.”

People Ifs Humans Individual Records Human Nature Photography Profession Contact

Book:Muray's celebrity portraits of the twenties and thirties: 135 photographs

Source: Muray's celebrity portraits of the twenties and thirties: 135 photographs

“No matter what part of the world we come from, we are all basically the same human beings. We all seek happiness and try to avoid suffering. We have the same basic human needs and concerns. All of us human beings want freedom and the right to determine our own destiny as individuals and as peoples. That is human nature.”

World Want Needs Trying Humans Matter Suffering Individual Human Beings Destiny Human Nature Concern No Matter What Human Rights Determine Human Needs Basic Human Needs

Author:Dalai Lama

“The propensity to make strong emotional bonds to particular individuals [is] a basic component of human nature”

Humans Individual Strong Human Nature Emotional Particular Components Propensity Strong Emotional

Author:John Bowlby

“It is not human nature which can assign the variable limits necessary to our needs. They are thus unlimited so far as they depend on the individual alone. Irrespective of any external regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.”

Needs Humans Feelings Individual Force Human Nature Depends Limits Capacity Unlimited Abyss Variables Insatiable

Book:Suicide

Source: Suicide

“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.”

“The goal of astrology is the alchemy of personality. It is to transform chaos into cosmos, collective human nature into individual and creative personality.”

Humans Individual Goal Creative Human Nature Personality Chaos Cosmos Collectives Astrology Alchemy

Author:Dane Rudhyar

“The state is concerned with the promotion of outward righteousness arising from the individual being constrained to keep the law. The Gospel alters human nature, whereas the state merely restrains human greed and evil, having no positive power to alter human motivation.”

Humans States Law Motivation Evil Individual Human Nature Concerned Greed Righteousness Promotion

Book:Reformation Thought: An Introduction

Source: Reformation Thought: An Introduction

“Human beings, in a sense, may be thought of as multidimensional creatures composed of such poetic considerations as the individual need for self-realization, subdued passions for overwhelming beauty, and a hunger for meaning beyond the flavors that enter and exit the physical body. A person might even be described as a self-contained multiverse.”

“The ordinary politician has a very low estimate of human nature. In his daily life he comes into contact chiefly with persons who want to get something or to avoid something. Beyond this circle of seekers after privileges, individuals and organized minorities, he is aware of a large unorganized, indifferent mass of citizens who ask nothing in particular and rarely complain. The politician comes after a while to think that the art of politics is to satisfy the seekers after favors and to mollify the inchoate mass with noble sentiments and patriotic phrases.”

Source: The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy

“Order always weighs on the individual. Disorder makes him wish for the police or for death. These are two extreme circumstances in which human nature is not at ease.”

Humans Two Order Individual Wish Human Nature Circumstances Police Extremes Ease Disorder Two Extremes

Author:Paul Valery