Human Nature Quotes - Page 26

• The least and most imperceptible impressions received in our infancy have consequences very important and of long duration.

  John Locke

  Long, Important, Duration

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• Young men think old men are fools, but old men know young men are fools.

  George Chapman

  Men, Thinking, Age

  All Fools act 5, sc. 1 (1605)

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• Power in any Form . . . when directed only by human Wisdom and Benevolence is dangerous.

  John Adams

  Form, Dangerous, Benevolence

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• I have long been settled in my own opinion that neither Philosophy, nor Religion, nor Morality, nor Wisdom, nor Interest, will ever govern nations or Parties, against their vanity, their Pride, their Resentment, or Revenge, or their Avarice, or Ambition. Nothing but Force and Power and Strength can restrain them.

  John Adams

  Revenge, Philosophy, Party

  John Adams (2016). “John Adams: Writings from the New Nation, 1784-1826”, p.102, Library of America

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• Thus, experience has ever shown, that education, as well as religion, aristocracy, as well as democracy and monarchy, are, singly, totally inadequate to the business of restraining the passions of men, of preserving a steady government, and protecting the lives, liberties, and properties of the people . . . . Religion, superstition, oaths, education, laws, all give way before passions, interest, and power, which can be resisted only by passions, interest, and power.

  John Adams

  Passion, Men, Law

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• It is human nature to imagine, to put yourself in another's shoes. The past may be another country. But the only passport required is empathy.

  Geraldine Brooks

  Country, Writing, Past

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• 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.

  John Adams

  Men, Religion, Principles

  Massachusetts Historical Society, John Adams, Samuel Adams, James Warren (1917). “Warren-Adams Letters: Being Chiefly a Correspondence Among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren ... 1743-1814”

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• [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.

  John Adams

  Art, Freedom, Men

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.440

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• Our sense of the full range of human nature, like our diet, has been steadily reduced. No matter how nourishing it might be, anything wild gets pulled - though as we'll see, some of the weeds growing in us have roots reaching deep into our shared past. Pull them if you want, but they'll just keep coming back again and again.

  Christopher Ryan

  Weed, Past, Roots

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• Why would so many risk their reputations, families, careers—even presidential legacies—for something that runs against human nature? Were monogamy an ancient, evolved trait characteristic of our species, as the standard narrative insists, these ubiquitous transgressions would be infrequent and such horrible enforcement unnecessary. No creature needs to be threatened with death to act in accord with its own nature.

  Christopher Ryan

  Running, Careers, Presidential

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• 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.

  Walter B. Pitkin

  Life, Business, Learning

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• The richness and variety, and indeed the advance, of our culture depend upon the continuation of this conflict [between conservatives and radicals], which is deeply rooted in human nature.

  Paul Johnson

  Growth, Balance, Culture

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• There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.

  Francis Bacon

  Wise, Nature, Fool

  1625 Essays, no.12,'Of Boldness'.

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• I want to lift the audience to the miraculous in human nature. After all, we shouldn't be here, with all the odds against us in nature. It's kind of unusual and wonderful!

  Paul Taylor

  Nature, Odds, Want

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• Fun... human nature... does no one any harm... Regular as clockwork the old excuses came back into the alert, sad and dissatisfied brain--nothing ever matched the deep excitement of the regular desire. Men always failed you when it came to the act. She might just as well have been to the pictures.

  Graham Greene

  Fun, Men, Brain

  Graham Greene (1970). “The Collected Edition: Brighton rock”

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• It is proposed that a form of free dialogue may well be one of the most effective ways of investigating the crisis which faces society, and indeed the whole of human nature and consciousness today. Moreover, it may turn out that such a form of free exchange of ideas and information is of fundamental relevance for transforming culture and freeing it of destructive misinformation, so that creativity can be liberated.

  David Bohm

  Creativity, Ideas, Fundamentals

  David Bohm, F. David Peat (2000). “Science, Order, and Creativity”, p.240, Psychology Press

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• People are not prepared or able to rejoice in suffering unless they experience a massive biblical revolution of how they think and feel about the meaning of life. Human nature and American culture make it impossible to rejoice in suffering. This is a miracle in the human soul wrought by God through His Word.

  John Piper

  Biblical, Thinking, People

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• Gargoyles were the complement to saints; Leonardo's caricatures were complementary to his untiring search for ideal beauty. And gargoyles were the expression of all the passions, the animal forces, the Caliban gruntings and groanings which are left in human nature when the divine has been poured away. Leonardo was less concerned than his Gothic predecessors with the ethereal parts of our nature, and so his caricatures, in their expression of passionate energy, merge imperceptibly into the heroic.

  Kenneth Clark

  Passion, Animal, Expression

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• I believe that He was made man, joining the human nature with the divine in one person; being conceived by the singular operation of the Holy Ghost, and born of the blessed Virgin Mary, who, as well after as before she brought Him forth, continued a pure and unspotted virgin.

  John Wesley

  Blessed, Believe, Men

  John Wesley (1827). “The Works of the Rev. John Wesley: The doctrine of original sin, and tracts on various subjects of polemical divinity”, p.532

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• Slavery is also as ancient as war, and war as human nature.

  Voltaire

  War, Slavery, Ancient

  Voltaire (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of Voltaire (Illustrated)”, p.4456, Delphi Classics

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• I hear my father-in-law's response..."Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!" Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

  David Mitchell

  Dream, Pain, Father

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• I think the novel, its business is the investigation of human nature.

  Ian Mcewan

  Thinking, Investigation, Novel

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• Understanding human nature. Perception. That's how I see acting - perception and communication.

  Juliette Lewis

  Communication, Understanding, Perception

  "New Again: Juliette Lewis". Interview with Ingrid Sischy and Hannah Mandel, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 27, 2012.

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• Animals have always left me with a curiosity about human nature. I trust animals more than most people.

  Pamela Anderson

  Animal, People, Curiosity

  Interview with Savi Kuruppu, cargocollective.com.

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• Why are we even here [on earth], what's our human nature? It's precipitating a real philosophical crisis that I find quite fascinating.

  Douglas Coupland

  Real, Philosophical, Earth

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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