Propensity Quotes - Page 5

• Hysteria, epilepsy, tuberculosis, and cancer were all found to result from the erratic propensities of a past life.

  Max Heindel

  Cancer, Past, Epilepsy

  Max Heindel (2016). “Occult principles of health and healing”, p.96, Max Heindel

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• When I became prime minister last September, I promised the Japanese people that I would not tolerate the politics of indecision. A propensity to delay difficult and weighty decisions has been hurting our country. It is detrimental to our economy, society and future, and it cannot be allowed to continue.

  Yoshihiko Noda

  Country, Hurt, People

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• ... there is a particular propensity in the world for people, wherever they appear in great numbers, to permit themselves collectively everything that would be forbidden them individually.

  Robert Musil

  Numbers, People, Temptation

  Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.274, University of Chicago Press

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• Social media and the Internet haven't changed our capacity for social interaction any more than the Internet has changed our ability to be in love or our basic propensity to violence, because those are such fundamental human attributes.

  Nicholas A. Christakis

  Media, Fundamentals, Violence

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• Lully's machine, Mill's fear and Lasswitz's chaotic library can be the subject of jokes, but they exaggerate a propensity which is common: making metaphysics and the arts into a kind of play with combinations.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Art, Play, Library

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• Bullshit is unavoidable when circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus, the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person's obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled-whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others - to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.

  Harry Frankfurt

  Honesty, Opportunity, Talking

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• Some philosophers have been of opinion that our immortal part acquires during this life certain habits of action or of sentiment, which become forever indissoluble, continuing after death in a future state of existence ... I would apply this ingenious idea to the generation, or production of the embryon, or new animal, which partakes so much of the form and propensities of the parent.

  Erasmus Darwin

  Science, Animal, Ideas

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• Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Believe, Intellectual, Elements

  "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich August von Hayek, 1944.

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• A fearful instance of the ill consequences attending upon irascibility - alive, with the qualifications of the dead - dead, with the propensities of the living - an anomaly on the face of the earth - being very calm, yet breathless.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Anomalies, Alive, Earth

  Edgar Allan Poe (2016). “The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe”, p.799, Xist Publishing

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• Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Self, Denial, Indulgence

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.1223, Delphi Classics

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• The vigor of a mass movement stems from the propensity of its followers for united action and self-sacrifice. When we ascribe the success of a movement to its faith, doctrine, propaganda, leadership, ruthlessness and so on, we are but referring to instruments of unification and to means used to inculcate a readiness for self-sacrifice. It is perhaps impossible to understand the nature of a mass movement unless it is recognized that their chief preoccupation is to foster, perfect and perpetuate a facility for united action and self-sacrifice.

  Eric Hoffer

  Mean, Sacrifice, Self

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• REACH, n. The radius of action of the human hand. The area within which it is possible (and customary) to gratify directly the propensity to provide.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Hands, Action, Humans

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.176, 谷月社

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• In a world where God does not exist, any reasonable person must see that the propensity toward selfishness should be the most venerated of all human traits. From this it stands to reason that any man, knowing the total expanse of his existence to be finite, who does not devote every moment of his life to acts of pure selfishness, must be seen as nothing more than a fool.

  Derek R. Audette

  Life, Men, Knowing

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• We live between two worlds; we soar in the atmosphere; we creep upon the soil; we have the aspirations of creators and the propensities of quadrupeds. There can be but one explanation of this fact. We are passing from the animal into a higher form, and the drama of this planet is in its second act.

  William Winwood Reade

  Drama, Animal, Two

  William Winwood Reade (1892). “The Martyrdom of Man”

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• If Copenhagen were a person, that person would be generous, beautiful, elderly, but with a flair. A human being that has certain propensities for quarrelling, filled with imagination and with appetite for the new and with respect for the old - somebody who takes good care of things and of people.

  Connie Nielsen

  Beautiful, Elderly, People

  "Connie Nielsen: Inspired by the city of her dreams". Interview with Mark Tutton, edition.cnn.com. August 6, 2008.

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• I never ever, ever say anything against my husband to anyone except my husband. Everyone gets in fights, and I think the natural propensity for women is, 'Oh I want to talk to someone.' But the minute you take what bothers you outside the bond between you and your husband, you let someone else into the relationship and that causes a wedge.

  Jen Lancaster

  Husband, Fighting, Thinking

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• There is a cowardly propensity in the human heart that delights in oppressing somebody else, and in the gratification of this base desire we always select a victim that can be outraged with safety.

  James T. Rapier

  Bullying, Heart, Safety

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• Along with our many human propensities, we evolved a huge cerebral cortex with which we make decisions.

  Helen Fisher

  Decision, Humans, Cerebral

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• I think there are universal principles that we should want to understand, but that are not necessarily good for us. We could recognise universal propensities which current cultures can't fully eradicate, which we would want to eradicate if we could. Let's say, a tendency for tribal violence. Or racism.

  Sam Harris

  Thinking, Racism, Principles

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• No one should feel at all offended or threatened by the obvious fact that we are not all born entirely blank, or entirely the same, in our mixture of the broad behavioral propensities defining what we call "temperament".

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Mixtures, Facts, Defining

  "The Lying Stones of Marrakech". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "The Internal Brand of the Scarlet W", p. 281, 2001.

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• After all, advocates, including advocates for States, are like managers of pugilistic and election contestants in that they have a propensity for claiming everything.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Election, States, Contestants

  "First Iowa Hydro-Electric Cooperative v. Federal Power Commission (FPC), 328 U.S. 152". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. April 29, 1946.

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• You possess the (pro.pen.si.ty), propensity to become one of the great success stories.

  Jon Jones

  Inspirational, Stories, Great Success

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• In fact, Darwin's own grandfather anticipated the central tenet of Lamarckism by some seven years: "All animals undergo perpetual transformations; which are in part produced by their own exertions... and many of these acquired forms or propensities are transmitted to their posterity."

  Erasmus Darwin

  Animal, Years, Grandfather

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• Possessed, as are all the fair daughters of Eve, of an hereditary propensity, transmitted to them undiminished through succeeding generations, to be 'soonmoved withtheslightesttouch of blame'; very little precept and practice will confirm them in the habit, and instruct them all the maxims, of self-justification.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Daughter, Self, Practice

  'An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification' (1787)

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• I think a good deal may be said to extenuate the fault of bad Poets. What we call a Genius, is hard to be distinguish'd by a man himself, from a strong inclination: and if his genius be ever so great, he can not at first discover it any other way, than by giving way to that prevalent propensity which renders him the more liable to be mistaken.

  Alexander Pope

  Strong, Men, Thinking

  Alexander Pope (1961). “Poems: Pastoral poetry, and An essay on criticism”

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