“We have not to construct human nature afresh, but to take it as we find it, and make the best of it.”
Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 11
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Dinah Craik 61
English novelist and poet 1826–1887Related quotes

volume I; lecture 22, "Algebra"; section 22-1, "Addition and multiplication"; p. 22-1
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

The Philosopher and the Wolf https://books.google.it/books?id=FSJbBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT0 (Pegasus Books, 2009), ch. 4.

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 442.
“We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity.”
Source: Nights at the Circus

2009, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (December 2009)
Context: We do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached — their fundamental faith in human progress — that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.
For if we lose that faith — if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace — then we lose what's best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.
Like generations have before us, we must reject that future. As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago, "I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present condition makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him."
Let us reach for the world that ought to be — that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls.