“Man, in his present state, appears to be a degraded creature; his best gold is mixed with dross, and his best motives are very far from being pure and free from earth and impurity.”

— John Jay

Letter to (22 August 1774), as published in The Life of John Jay (1833) by William Jay, Vol. 2, p. 345.
1770s, Letter to Lindley Murray (1774)
Context: Among the strange things of this world, nothing seems more strange than that men pursuing happiness should knowingly quit the right and take a wrong road, and frequently do what their judgments neither approve nor prefer. Yet so is the fact; and this fact points strongly to the necessity of our being healed, or restored, or regenerated by a power more energetic than any of those which properly belong to the human mind.
We perceive that a great breach has been made in the moral and physical systems by the introduction of moral and physical evil; how or why, we know not; so, however, it is, and it certainly seems proper that this breach should be closed and order restored. For this purpose only one adequate plan has ever appeared in the world, and that is the Christian dispensation. In this plan I have full faith. Man, in his present state, appears to be a degraded creature; his best gold is mixed with dross, and his best motives are very far from being pure and free from earth and impurity.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Man, in his present state, appears to be a degraded creature; his best gold is mixed with dross, and his best motives a…" by John Jay?

John Jay 20

American politician and a founding father of the United Sta… 1745–1829

Related quotes

“What! from his helpless Creature be repaid
Pure Gold for what he lent him dross-allay'd —
Sue for a Debt he never did contract,
And cannot answer — Oh, the sorry trade!”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

“Best not to mix the past with the present. The present paints the past with gold. The past paints the present with lead.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

“From the Throne to the earth is the creation of God Most High; everything but his existence is his action. He brought them into existence from pure non-being.”

Ruzbihan Baqli (1128–1209) Persian poet, mystic, and Sufi

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2002), p.112

“A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Source: Human, All Too Human

“It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Il faut vingt ans pour mener l’homme de l’état de plante où il est dans le ventre de sa mère, et de l’état de pur animal, qui est le partage de sa première enfance, jusqu’à celui où la maturité de la raison commence à poindre. Il a fallu trente siècles pour connaître un peu sa structure. Il faudrait l’éternité pour connaître quelque chose de son âme. Il ne faut qu’un instant pour le tuer.
"Man: General Reflection on Man" (1771)
Citas, Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1770–1774)

“By being so far educated beyond his capacity is he unable to learn within himself from nature? Divorced as he is from her, who and what can now be his? Does the so-called free man of democracy merely exploit his sovereignity?”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

A Testament (1957)

“A man is a better citizen of the United States for being also a loyal citizen of his state, and of his city; for being loyal to his family, and to his profession or trade; for being loyal to his college or his lodge.... For only through the ennobling effect of its strivings can we develop the best that is in us and give to this country the full benefit of our great inheritance.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

The Jewish Problem And How to Solve It (1915).
Extra-judicial writings

“Ideas should be neutral. But man animates them with his passions and folly. Impure and turned into beliefs, they take on the appearance of reality. The passage from logic is consummated. Thus are born ideologies, doctrines, and bloody farce.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

“We must judge of a man's motives from his overt acts.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

King v. Waddington (1800), 1 East, 158.

“[Some] disobey the earth and sharpen knives against the animals to gain clothing and food. The Indian Brahmans disapproved of this personally and taught the Naked Philosophers of Egypt to disapprove of it too. From there Pythagoras, who was the first Greek to associate with Egyptians, borrowed the principle. He let the earth keep living creatures, but held that what the earth grows is pure, and so lived off that because it was sufficient to feed body and soul. Clothing made from dead creatures, which most people wear, he considered impure; he dressed in linen and, for the same reason, made his shoes of plaited bark. He derived many advantages from this purity, above all that of perceiving his own soul.”

Apollonius of Tyana (15–100) Ancient Greek philosopher

Attributed to Apollonius in Philostratus, Life of Apollonius. Quoted from Ram Swarup (2000). On Hinduism: Reviews and reflections, Chapter India and Greece

“Man, in his present state, appears to be a degraded creature; his best gold is mixed with dross, and his best motives are very far from being pure and free from earth and impurity.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John Jay 20

Related quotes

Related topics