“Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.”
Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness
Source: The Conquest of Happiness
Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978
“Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.”
Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness
Source: The Conquest of Happiness
“One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.”
Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist
Source: Physics and Politics https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4350 (1869), Ch. 5, The Age of Discussion
“Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.”
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright
No. 162 (5 September 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)
“But what is Government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?”
James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)
Federalist No. 51 (6 February 1788)
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)
Context: The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of Government. But what is Government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Source: 1910s, Proposed Roads To Freedom (1918), Ch. VI: International relations, p. 106
Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961) Swedish diplomat, economist, and author
Markings (1964)
Context: Respect for the word is the first commandment in the discipline by which a man can be educated to maturity — intellectual, emotional, and moral.
Respect for the word — to employ it with scrupulous care and in incorruptible heartfelt love of truth — is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race.
To misuse the word is to show contempt for man. It undermines the bridges and poisons the wells. It causes Man to regress down the long path of his evolution.
"But I say unto you, that every idle word that men speak..."
John Marsden book Tomorrow, When the War Began
Source: Tomorrow, When the War Began