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Human Nature Quotes

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Human Nature Quotes

“At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.”

Humans Kind Universe Moral Human Nature Understood Core Versions Code Maps Moral Code

Book:Public Opinion

Source: Public Opinion

“A highly developed moral nature joined to an undeveloped intellectual nature, an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited religious nature, is of necessity repulsive. It represents a bit of human nature a good bit, of course, but a bit only in disproportionate, unnatural and revolting prominence.”

Humans Courses Bits Religious Moral Human Nature Intellectual Artistic Unnatural Prominence

Book:Edward Gibbon (1856) Bishop Butler (1854) Sterne and Thackeray (1864) The Waverley novels (1858) Charles Dickens (1858) Thomas Babington Macaulay (1856) Béranger (1857) Mr. Clough's poems (1862) Henry Crabb Robinson (1869) Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browni

Source: Edward Gibbon (1856) Bishop Butler (1854) Sterne and Thackeray (1864) The Waverley novels (1858) Charles Dickens (1858) Thomas Babington Macaulay (1856) Béranger (1857) Mr. Clough's poems (1862) Henry Crabb Robinson (1869) Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browni

“It is visible then that it was not any Heathen Religion or other Idolatrous Superstition, that first put Man upon crossing his Appetites and subduing his dearest Inclinations, but the skilful Management of wary Politicians; and the nearer we search into human Nature, the more we shall be convinced, that the Moral Virtues are the Political Offspring which Flattery begot upon Pride.”

Source: The Fable of the Bees

“All political movements are like this - we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.”

“As ages roll on there is doubtless a progression in human nature. The intellectual comes to rule the physical, and the moral claims to subordinate both. It is no longer strength of body that prevails, but strength of mind; while the law of God proclaims itself superior to both.”

Mind Humans Body Age Law Moral Human Nature Evolution Intellectual Claims Superiors Progression Subordinates Strength Of Mind

Author:James McCosh

“For as long as men and women have talked about war, they have talked about it in terms of right and wrong. And for almost as long, some among them have derided such talk, called it a charade, insisted that war lies beyond (or beneath) moral judgment. War is a world apart, where life itself is at stake, where human nature is reduced to its elemental forms, where self-interest and necessity prevail. Here men and women do what they must to save themselves and their communities, and morality and law have no place. Inter arma silent leges: in time of war the law is silent.”

Source: Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations

“Among all the many great transitions that have marked the evolution of Western civilisation ... there has been only one-the triumph of Christianity -that can be called in the fullest sense a "revolution": a truly massive and epochal revision of humanity's prevailing vision of reality, so pervasive in its influence and so vast in its consequences as to actually have created a new conception of the world, of history, of human nature, of time, and of the moral good.”

“All are agreed that the various moral qualities are in a sense bestowed by nature: we are just, and capable of temperance, and brave, and possessed of the other virtues from the moment of our birth. But nevertheless we expect to find that true goodness is something different, and that the virtues in the true sense come to belong to us in another way. For even children and wild animals possess the natural dispositions, yet without Intelligence these may manifestly be harmful.”

Source: The Nicomachean ethics

“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

“There has also been a change - a slippage - in our intellectual and moral strength. Seven lean years of drouth and famine have withered a field of ideas.”

Years Ideas Moral Human Nature Fields Intellectual Seven Famine Withered Moral Strength

Author:John F. Kennedy

“[Wendy] Davis [pursued] higher education, as her campaign website says, with 'the help of academic scholarships, student loans, and state and federal grants.' Now that she is in a high-profile and hotly partisan race, it has come out that she also benefited from the moral and financial support of her second - now ex - husband. In the process, though, behavior we would expect and hardly notice in a man is being portrayed as freakish and problematic in a woman.”

“The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, 'I was wrong'.”

Source: Pieces of Eight Pa

“The form of government which you admire, when its principles are pure is admirable indeed. It is productive of every Thing which is great and excellent among men. But its principles are as easily destroyed as human nature is corrupted. Such a government is only to be supported by pure religion or Austere morals.”

Men Humans Government Form Religion Moral Principles Human Nature Morality Pure Admire Destroyed Excellent Productive Admirable Forms Of Government

Book:Warren-Adams Letters: Being Chiefly a Correspondence Among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren ... 1743-1814

Source: Warren-Adams Letters: Being Chiefly a Correspondence Among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren ... 1743-1814

“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.”

Needs Trying Humans Sides Moral Enemy Virtue Study Human Nature Eternal Army Salvation Storm Defense Camps Commanders Theological Cardinals Fortresses Moral Virtues

Author:Ignatius of Loyola

“Kant regards the universalizability test for maxims as focused on a very special sort of situation: one where the agent is tempted to make an exception to a recognized duty out of self-preference. The universalizability test is supposed help the agent to see, in a particular case of moral judgment, that self-preference is not a satisfactory reason for exempting yourself from a duty you recognize. Kant thinks, as a matter of human nature, that this situation arises often enough and that we need a canon of judgment to guard against it.”

“My version of relativism is pluralistic and attributes functions to morality that in combination with human nature place limits on what could count as a true morality. Unlike many other relativists, I do not hold that people are subject to a morality because they all belong to a certain group. That is, I don't hold that being a member of a group makes one's subject to some set of generally accepted norms. What is true is that others around us teach us morality and moral language, so they inevitably influence us.”

People Language Moral Teach Influence Human Nature Morality Accepted Norm Relativism

Author:David Wong

“Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice.”

“We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations. We invest human nature with God-like qualities, with moral and rational faculties that make us both just and wise. We simplify the complexity of human experience by erecting a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil.”

“A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.”

Persons Form Nations Responsibility Moral Society Human Nature Identity Morality Integrity Members Responsible Hypocrisy Citizenship American Citizens Moral Responsibility Moral Society

Book:Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness

Source: Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness

“We may pretend we are basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”

People May Whole Business Mistake Moral Human Nature Prove Making Mistakes

Author:Terry Hands

“It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.”

Humans Together Law Human Beings Moral Millions Rights Human Nature Morality Absurd Citizenship Moral Law

Book:The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence and Papers, 1816-1826

Source: The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence and Papers, 1816-1826

“Man is only a moral being because he lives in society, since morality consists in solidarity with the group, and varies according to that solidarity. Cause all social life to vanish, and moral life would vanish at the same time, having no object to cling to.”

Men Social Causes Moral Groups Human Nature Objects Morality Solidarity Vary Social Life Moral Life

Book:The Division of Labor in Society

Source: The Division of Labor in Society

“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

“Only our deep moral values and our strong social institutions can hold back that jungle and restrain the darker impulses of human nature.”

Humans Values Strong Social Moral Human Nature Institutions Impulse Jungle Moral Values Social Institutions

Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1981

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1981

“Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.”

Source: Correspondence

“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.”

“Man is a tragic animal. Not because of his smallness, but because he is too well endowed. Man has longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfill. We have expectations of a just and moral world. Man requires meaning in a meaningless world.”