
“Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.”
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Enoch Powell, Joseph Chamberlain (Thames and Hudson, 1977), p. 151
1970s
“Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.”
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
“Politics is the art of human happiness.”
Source: A History of Europe (1934), Ch. 31.
2010s, 2011, Are we alone in the universe? (2011)
“All love affairs are tragedies in the end unless the lovers die at the same moment.”
[Snare, 2003, Macmillan, ISBN 0312890451, p. 557]
“Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.”
The Rights of Man (1945). London: Geoffrey Bles, pp. 7–8.
Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 6, To Hold Your District: Study Human Nature and Act Accordin’
Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 3
Six Principles of Political Realism http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/morg6.htm, § 1.
Politics Among Nations (1948)
Context: Political realism believes that politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature. In order to improve society it is first necessary to understand the laws by which society lives. The operation of these laws being impervious to our preferences, men will challenge them only at the risk of failure.
Realism, believing as it does in the objectivity of the laws of politics, must also believe in the possibility of developing a rational theory that reflects, however imperfectly and one-sidedly, these objective laws. It believes also, then, in the possibility of distinguishing in politics between truth and opinion — between what is true objectively and rationally, supported by evidence and illuminated by reason, and what is only a subjective judgment, divorced from the facts as they are and informed by prejudice and wishful thinking.
"Paul's assembly in Corinth: an alternative society," in Urban Religion in Corinth (Harvard: 2005), pp. 374-375.