“We do not need to be able to say what “human nature” is in order to be able to say that some training is “against human nature.””
Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 6.
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Paul Goodman 47
American novelist, playwright, poet and psychotherapist 1911–1972Related quotes
Source: Part II : Practical Pictorial Photography, Fidelity to nature and justifiable untruth, p. 3
Source: The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World (1992), Ch. 6: 'The Mathematical Secret', p. 148
                                        
                                        "On the Conservation of Force" (1862),  p. 279 
Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects (1881)
                                    
                                        
                                        F 44 
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)
                                    
                                        
                                        Diary (11 August 1890) 
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
                                    
                                        
                                        1860s, Cooper Union speech (1860) 
Context: Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling — that sentiment — by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel?