Propensity Quotes - Page 2

• The human propensity is to believe that flukes of good fortune will never come to an end.

  Charles C. Mann

  Believe, Flukes, Ends

  Charles C. Mann (2011). “1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created”, p.256, Vintage

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• A morbid propensity that causes great suffering in domestic life is often curiously infectious to the very person for whom it creates most suffering.

  Ada Leverson

  Suffering, Causes, Life Is

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• Women have in their natures something akin to owls and fireflies. While men grow stupid and sleepy towards evening, they become brighter and more open-eyed, and show a propensity to flit and sparkle under the light of chandeliers.

  Abba Louisa Goold Woolson

  Stupid, Firefly, Men

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• I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?

  Voltaire

  Stupid, Heart, Love Life

  Voltaire (1956). “Candide: or, Optimism”

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• The solution probably doesn't look like the problem. If we have this propensity to worry, to be anxious, to be depressed, to be angry - focusing on the worry, anxiety, depression, and anger? Probably not gonna be the solution.

  Moby

  Worry, Anxiety, Looks

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• An individual has a healthy personality to the exact degree to which they have the propensity to look for the good in every situation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Personality, Healthy, Looks

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• With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper. In an industrial community this propensity for emulation expresses itself in pecuniary emulation; and this, so far as regards the Western civilized communities of the present, is virtually equivalent to saying that it expresses itself in some form of conspicuous waste.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Self, Community, Waste

  The Theory of the Leisure Class ch. 5 (1899)

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• Nevertheless, if we contemplate a society with a somewhat stable wage-unit, with national characteristics which determine the propensity to consume and the preference for liquidity, and with a monetary system which rigidly links the quantity of money to the stock of the precious metals, it will be essential for the maintenance of prosperity that the authorities should pay close attention to the state of the balance of trade. For a favourable balance, provided it is not too large, will prove extremely stimulating; whilst an unfavourable balance may soon produce a state of persistent depression.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Balance, Essentials, Attention

  John Maynard Keynes (2006). “General Theory Of Employment , Interest And Money”, p.307, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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

  John Bowlby

  Strong, Emotional, Human Nature

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• Nothing has stolen more dreams, dashed more hopes, broken up more families, and messed up more people psychologically than our propensity to disregard God's commands regarding sexual purity.

  Andy Stanley

  Dream, People, Broken

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• No quality of human nature is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however different from, or even contrary to our own.

  David Hume

  Communication, Quality, Different

  David Hume (1874). “A Treatise on Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects; and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”, p.111

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• Abstemiousness in diet and control of the passions, will preserve the intellect and give mental and moral vigor, enabling men to bring all their propensities under the control of the higher powers, and to discern between right and wrong, the sacred and the common.

  Ellen G. White

  Passion, Men, Giving

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• Your compassion travels beyond your own inner circle. And then you breathe out an alternative version where you mentally and emotionally and psychologically purify the poisons. So indeed, the generative idea is in the crux of this practice and of my propensity toward poetry, which is a practice of the imagination.

  Anne Waldman

  Compassion, Practice, Circles

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• Of course, the greater one's need, the greater one's propensity to be mesmerized.

  Vikram Seth

  Needs, Courses, Mesmerized

  Vikram Seth (1993). “A Suitable Boy”, p.609, Penguin Books India

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• I'm a human being, just like everybody else. I'm up some days and down others. Some days, I just refuse comment. If I'm feeling a little down, I won't say anything. But if I'm really up, I'll let it all hang out. I do have a slight propensity to put my foot in my mouth.

  Ted Turner

  Feet, Feelings, Say Anything

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• It seems priggish or pollyannaish to deny that my intention in writing the work was to titillate the nastier propensities of my readers. My own healthy inheritance of original sin comes out in the book and I enjoyed raping and ripping by proxy. It is the novelist’s innate cowardice that makes him depute to imaginary personalities the sins that he is too cautious to commit for himself.

  Anthony Burgess

  Book, Writing, Personality

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• You know, my boy, he said, it's impossible to love men such as they are. And yet we must. So try to do good to men by doing violence to your feelings, holding your nose, and shutting your eyes, especially shutting your eyes. Endure their villainy without anger, as much as possible; try to remember that you're a man too. For, if you're even a little above average intelligence, you'll have the propensity to judge people severely. Men are vile by nature and they'd rather love out of fear. Don't give in to such love: despise it always.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Love, Eye, Boys

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• When people are really drunk they have a propensity to harm themselves and others - they fall off buildings, they drive into other cars.

  Emily Yoffe

  Fall, People, Drunk

  "Short Haul". "Dear Prudence" with Emily Yoffe, www.slate.com. August 17, 2015.

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• Religion is nothing more than a useless and sometimes dangerous, evolutionary accident. Religious behavior may be a misfiring, an unfortunate byproduct of an underlying psychological propensity which in other circumstances is, or once was, useful.

  Richard Dawkins

  Religious, Religion, Useless

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• If you are leaning over to starboard to balance the boat against the other guy's propensity to lean too far to port, both of you are about to get wet.

  Kenneth Kaye

  Guy, Balance, Boat

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• Forwards are the gnarled and scarred creatures who have a propensity for running into and bleeding all over each other.

  Peter FitzSimons

  Running, Bleeding, Rugby

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• As to the origin of civil Societies or Governments; the Author of our Being, has given Man a Nature to be fitted for, and disposed to Society. It was not good for Man at first to be alone; his nature is social, having various Affections, Propensities and Passions, which respect Society, and cannot be indulged without a social Intercourse.

  Abraham J. Williams

  Passion, Men, Firsts

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• Genes are rarely about inevitability, especially when it comes to humans, the brain, or behavior. They're about vulnerability, propensities, tendencies.

  Robert M. Sapolsky

  Brain, Behavior, Genes

  Robert M. Sapolsky (2004). “Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping - Now Revised and Updated”, p.293, Macmillan

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• If we betake ourselves to the statistical method, we do so confessing that we are unable to follow the details of each individual case, and expecting that the effects of widespread causes, though very different in each individual, will produce an average result on the whole nation, from a study of which we may estimate the character and propensities of an imaginary being called the Mean Man.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Character, Mean, Science

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• Before my marriage, I didn’t think about all the obligations that were awaiting me. My experience has proved useful and I think that I have a natural propensity to feel compassion for people and their problems.

  Grace Kelly

  Thinking, Compassion, People

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