“Mankind naturally and generally love to be flatter'd”

— Benjamin Franklin

"A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain" (1725) https://thefederalistpapers.org/founders/franklin/benjamin-franklin-mankind-naturally-and-generally-love-to-be-flatterdm.
Context: Mankind naturally and generally love to be flatter'd: Whatever sooths our Pride, and tends to exalt our Species above the rest of the Creation, we are pleas'd with and easily believe, when ungrateful Truths shall be with the utmost Indignation rejected. "What! bring ourselves down to an Equality with the Beasts of the Field! with the meanest part of the Creation! 'Tis insufferable!" But, (to use a Piece of common Sense) our Geese are but Geese tho' we may think 'em Swans; and Truth will be Truth tho' it sometimes prove mortifying and distasteful.

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 "Mankind naturally and generally love to be flatter'd" by Benjamin Franklin?

Benjamin Franklin 183

American author, printer, political theorist, politician, p… 1706–1790

Benjamin Franklin quote: “Mankind naturally and generally love to be flatter'd”

Related quotes

“The love of God consists in an ardent desire to procure the general welfare, and reason teaches me that there is nothing which contributes more to the general welfare of mankind than the perfection of reason.”

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

Closing sentence of the Preface to the general science (1677) (in P. Wiener (ed.), Leibniz Selections, Macmilland Press Ltd, 1951).

“[The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 10

“If the public thought elevates you above the generality of men, let the other humble you, and hold you in a perfect equality with all mankind, for this is your natural condition.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Discourses on the Condition of the Great

“The Republican Party insists that slavery originated in force, by the stronger against the weaker party, and not by natural right; that it is maintained and upheld by oppression and wrong, and against the law of nature. This usurped ownership in man is not that kind of property which is recognized by the general consent of mankind.”

Elbridge G. Spaulding (1809–1897) American politician

Remarks on the Republican platform (1860)

“I love mankind …, but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Los hermanos Karamazov

Source: The Brothers Karamazov

“And it was grief that made Mankind your lover,
And it was grief that made you love Mankind.”

Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) American poet, editor, literary critic, soldier

Main Street and Other Poems (1917), In Memory
Context: Your eyes, that looked on glory, could discover
The angry scar to which the world was blind:
And it was grief that made Mankind your lover,
And it was grief that made you love Mankind.

“What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Letter to Robert Cunninghame-Graham (January 1898), published in The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, edited by Frederick R. Karl and Laurence Davies, Vol. 2, p. 30. ISBN 0521257484

“Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

“All mankind love a lover.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Love
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Essays, First Series

“Life can be explained for the most part in terms of natural laws. The causes of suffering, pain then become plainer. Man should strive to enrich as much as possible life. To make himself an important tool in the general progress of mankind.”

Virgil John Tangborn (1920–1944)

March 26, 1942

“Mankind naturally and generally love to be flatter'd”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Benjamin Franklin 183

Related quotes

Related topics