Human Nature Quotes
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If education is to develop human nature so that it may attain the object of its being, it must involve the exercise of judgment.
Immanuel Kant
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The words “human nature” can be the greatest obstacle to human growth.
Eugene J. Martin
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There is no such passion in human nature, as the passion for gravy among commercial gentlemen.
Charles Dickens
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We are apathetic and indifferent towards our sins, and we are usually not disturbed by them at all. We are more likely to weep over what is done to us, or over difficult leadings. We weep over our sorrows, troubles and disappointments. Each one of us does so, for this is our human nature.
But not everyone comes to the point of true contrition and repentance and weeps over his sins. Such reactions are foreign to human nature.
The human heart has a way of thinking that it is always in the right and has no need to weep over its sins. By nature, we are self-confident and impenitent. We blame others or even accuse God when we do not understand His ways.
Basilea Schlink
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Democracy has no place for the kind of justice implied in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Democracy is a system for the resolution of conflict, not for vengeance. Simple black-white notions of right and wrong do not fit into democratic politics. Political controversies result from the fact that the issues are complex, and men may properly have differences of opinion about them. The most terrible of all over-simplifications is the notion that politics is a contest between good people and bad people. Democracy is based on a profound insight into human nature, the realization that all men are sinful, all are imperfect, all are prejudiced, and none knows the whole truth. That is why we need liberty and why we have an obligation to hear all men. Liberty gives us a chance to learn from other people, to become aware of our own limitations, and to correct our bias. Even when we disagree with other people we like to think that they speak from good motives, and while we realize that all men are limited, we do not let ourselves imagine that any man is bad. Democracy is a political system for people who are not sure that they are right.
Elmer Eric Schattschneider
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Can human nature ever be wholly and radically transformed? Can the man whom God made good be made wicked by man? Can the soul be reshaped in its entirety by destiny and made evil because destiny is evil? Can the heart become misshapen and afflicted with ugly, incurable deformities under disproportionate misfortune, like a spinal column bent beneath a too low roof?
Victor Hugo
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The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear from thrust back, by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.
John Stuart Mill
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He had forgotten that the most elemental instinct in human nature is not hate but love, the former inextricably linked to the latter.
Attica Locke
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A great and frequent error in our judgment of human nature is to suppose that those sentiments and feelings have no existence, which may be only for a time concealed. The precious metals are not found at the surface of the earth, except in sandy places.
Arthur Helps
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Power, after it has ceased from troubling, is the dominant passion in human nature.
Gertrude Atherton
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In some respects, if I had to choose just one (virtue on the spiritual path), I'd feel safest with a sense of humor. We pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, have a good laugh about human nature, and get on with our journeys.
Bo Lozoff
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If human nature felt no temptation to take a chance there might not be much investment merely as a result of cold calculation.
John Maynard Keynes
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He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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In so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider it is hard to find rules without exception.
George Eliot
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The best answer to all objections urged against prayer is the fact that man cannot help praying; for we may be sure that that which is so spontaneous and ineradicable in human nature has its fitting objects and methods in the arrangements of a boundless Providence.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin
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My opinions about human nature are shared by many psychologists, linguists, and biologists, not to mention philosophers and scholars going back centuries.
Steven Pinker
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Analysis of rebellion leads at least to the suspicion that, contrary to the postulates of contemporary thought, a human nature does exist, as the Greeks believed. Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in oneself worth preserving? ... Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended.
Albert Camus
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The urge to revolt is one of the essential dimensions of human nature.
Albert Camus
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As I see it, there are two great forces of human nature: self-interest, and caring for others. Capitalism harnesses self-interest in a helpful and sustainable way, but only on behalf of those who can pay. Government aid and philanthropy channel our caring for those who can't pay. But to provide rapid improvement for the poor we need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today.
Bill Gates
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But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal Impulses and preferences.
John Stuart Mill
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The fact of our deriving constant pleasure from whatever is a type or semblance of divine attributes, and from nothing but that which is so, is the most glorious of all that can be demonstrated of human nature; it not only sets a great gulf of specific separation between us and the lower animals, but it seems a promise of a communion ultimately deep, close, and conscious, with the Being whose darkened manifestations we here feebly and unthinkingly delight in.
John Ruskin
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Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial, but generally speaking it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber; it is selfishness and impatience rather than generosity and fortitude, that one hears of. There is so little real friendship in the world! – and unfortunately' (speaking low and tremulously) 'there are so many who forget to think seriously till it is almost too late.
Jane Austen
