“Man is naturally more disposed to beneficent than selfish actions.”
Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 8
Context: Man is naturally more disposed to beneficent than selfish actions. This we learn even from the history of savages. The domestic virtues have something in them so inviting and genial, and the public virtues of the citizen something so grand and inspiring, that even he who is barely uncorrupted, is seldom able to resist their charm.
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Wilhelm Von Humboldt35
German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, dipl… 1767–1835Related quotes
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher
The Educational Theory of Immanuel Kant (1904)
Context: Man has his own inclinations and a natural will which, in his actions, by means of his free choice, he follows and directs. There can be nothing more dreadful than that the actions of one man should be subject to the will of another; hence no abhorrence can be more natural than that which a man has for slavery. And it is for this reason that a child cries and becomes embittered when he must do what others wish, when no one has taken the trouble to make it agreeable to him. He wants to be a man soon, so that he can do as he himself likes.
Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 62
H. Jay Dinshah (1933–2000) American proponent of veganism and Jain ethics
Out of the Jungle (1967); as quoted in Victoria Moran, Compassion, the Ultimate Ethic: An Exploration of Veganism (Wellingborough: Thorsons, 1985), p. 31.
T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader
On the 2007 Nigerian Elections - "Selfless Service" http://www.modernghana.com/newsthread2/219944/1/ Modern Ghana (May 28 2009)
“Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature — opposition to it, in his love of justice.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
1850s, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)
Context: Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature — opposition to it, in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks, and throes, and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise — repeal all compromises — repeal the Declaration of Independence — repeal all past history, you still can not repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart, that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.
Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer
Source: How to Kill a Rock Star
Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet
Ibid., p. 110
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A superioridade do sonhador consiste em que sonhar é muito mais prático que viver, e em que o sonhador extrai da vida um prazer muito mais vasto e muito mais variado do que o homem de acção. Em melhores e mais directas palavras, o sonhador é que é o homem de acção.
Chapman Cohen (1868–1954) British atheist and secularist writer and lecturer
p. 77 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89009314162&view=1up&seq=81 <br class="br">Determinism or Free-will? (1912)
“The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature.”
George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher
Rose, Blanche, and Violet (London: Smith, Elder, 1848) vol. 1, pp. viii-ix
Context: The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced — that without intelligence we should be Brutes — but it is the tendency of our gaping, wondering dispositions to give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in the world.