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Human Nature Quotes

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Human Nature Quotes

“In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.”

Source: Democracy in America: Book One

“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.”

“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

“Fatally powerful as religious systems have been, human nature is stronger and wider, and though dogmas may hamper they cannot absolutely repress its growth.”

Humans May Has Beens Growth Religious Powerful Atheism Human Nature Stronger Positive Atheism Dogma Hamper

Book:Complete Works Of George Eliot

Source: Complete Works Of George Eliot

“One fact must be familiar to all those who have any experience of human nature - a sincerely religious man is often an exceedingly bad man.”

Men Humans Facts Religious Atheism Human Nature Positive Atheism Familiar Sincerely Bad Man

Book:The Martyrdom of Man

Source: The Martyrdom of Man

“The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have been flown for religious ideals.”

Humans Has Beens Religion Religious Human Nature Highest Ideals Bravery Wings Charity Spread Devotion Flight

Book:The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature

Source: The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature

“It appears an extraordinary thing to me, that since there is such a diabolical spirit in the depravity of human nature, as persecution for difference of opinion in religious tenets, there never happened to be any inquisition, any auto da fe, any crusade, among the Pagans.”

Humans Spirit Differences Religious Opinion Happened Human Nature Extraordinary Intolerance Persecution Pagan Crusades Depravity Extraordinary Things Inquisition Diabolical Differences Of Opinion

Book:The Works of Laurence Sterne ...: With a Life of the Author, Written by Himself ...

Source: The Works of Laurence Sterne ...: With a Life of the Author, Written by Himself ...

“If you ask a Saudi Imam why women in Saudi Arabia can't drive, he'll say, 'Because Islam demands it.' But that's absurd, because - first of all - Islam demands no such thing; and secondly, the only country in the world in which women can't drive is Saudi Arabia. The inability to understand the difference between a cultural practice and religious belief is shocking among self-described intellectuals.”

“I have a feeling-as compelling as a religious conviction-that if industry will constantly pass on to the worker and the customer all the savings of labor-saving machinery and invention, rather than siphon them off into the pools of watered securities, it will by that process keep distribution and production in balance and go as far toward Utopia as our poor human natures will go or be driven.”

“He [God] just seems so man-made to me. There are so many theories, and not everyone can be right. It's human nature to need a religious crutch, and I don't begrudge anyone that. I just don't need one.”

Men Needs Humans Made Seems Religious Human Nature Theory Crutches

Author:Janeane Garofalo

“People yearn to be in one of the best--a combat marine regiment, an elite college, the executive committee of a company, a religious sect, a fraternity, a garden club--any collectivity that can be compared favorably with other, competing groups.”

People Religious Company Groups Human Nature College Garden Clubs Executives Combat Elites Committees Competing Marine Sects Fraternity Collectivity Religious Sects

Author:E. O. Wilson

“The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it.”

Inspiration Religious Wonderful Human Nature Source Atheist Source Of Inspiration

Author:George Santayana

“If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.”

Ifs God Religious Human Nature Atheist Reciprocate

Author:Voltaire

“There is no doubt that religion had already waned under the onslaught of the Enlightenment, but it was Freud who provided the radically new understanding of human nature that made any religious explanation of the whats and whys of our personhood seem naive.”

Humans Made Seems Understanding Religious Doubt Human Nature Enlightenment Explanation No Doubt Naive Personhood

Author:Tony Campolo

“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

“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.”

Ifs Thinking Humans May Two Different Real Religious Lines Interesting Environment Human Nature Development Tradition Roots Related Interaction Different Times Religious Traditions

Author:Werner Heisenberg

“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.”

“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

“The cynic about human nature might say that religious morality is an effective way of keeping people in line. The threat of hell, the reward of heaven, but the rules of the holy books are out of date and often barbaric.”

People Way Humans Book Might Religion Heaven Religious Lines Hell Human Nature Morality Holy Threat Rewards Cynic Barbaric Holy Books

Author:Richard Dawkins

“The Messiah will only come when he is no longer needed.”

Religious Human Nature Needed Messiah

Author:Franz Kafka

“You live in a society, that always demands you to have a label to define yourself. Now it's up to you, whether you choose man-made labels like 'religious' and 'atheist', or your innate natural label gifted by Mother Nature, i.e. 'human'.”