Quotes About Human nature

in which I argued that human beings are fitted by evolution with a number of destructive motives such as greed, lust, dominance, vengeance, and self-deception.

In this way the theory of human nature coming out of the cognitive revolution has more in common with the Judeo-Christian theory of human nature, and with the psychoanalytic theory proposed by Sigmund Freud, than with behaviorism, social constructionism, and other versions of the Blank Slate. Behavior is not just emitted or elicited, nor does it come directly out of culture or society. It comes from an internal struggle among mental modules with differing agendas and goals.

Human selfishness being what it is, almost everyone kept the pleasant task for themselves.

Human nature may be studied, just as anything else in the world may be. And our decisions on how to organize our lives can take the facts of human nature into account—including the discounting of our own intuitions when a scientific understanding casts them in doubt.

Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite.

The biologist J.B.S. Haldane once said that there are two reasons why humans do not turn into angels: moral imperfection and a body plan that cannot accommodate both arms and wings.

For one thing, empathy can subvert human well-being when it runs afoul of a more fundamental principle, fairness. Batson found that when people empathized with Sheri, a ten-year-old girl with a serious illness, they also opted for her to jump a queue for medical treatment ahead of other children who had waited longer or needed it more. Empathy would have consigned these children to death and suffering because they were nameless and faceless.

In the study of humans, there are major spheres of human experience—beauty, motherhood, kinship, morality, cooperation, sexuality, violence—in which evolutionary psychology provides the only coherent theory.

In The Blank Slate I argued that two extreme visions of human nature—a Tragic vision that is resigned to its flaws, and a Utopian vision that denies it exists—define the great divide between right-wing and left-wing political ideologies.154

the Blank Slate had, and has, a dark side. The vacuum that it posited in human nature was eagerly filled by totalitarian regimes, and it did nothing to prevent their genocides. It perverts education, childrearing, and the arts into forms of social engineering. It torments mothers who work outside the home and parents whose children did not turn out as they would have liked. It threatens to outlaw biomedical research that could alleviate human suffering.

loss aversion, the sunk-cost fallacy, and throwing good money after bad, is patently irrational, but it is surprisingly pervasive in human decision-making.

two extreme visions of human nature—a Tragic vision that is resigned to its flaws, and a Utopian vision that denies it exists—define the great divide between right-wing and left-wing political ideologies.154 And I suggested that a better understanding of human nature in the light of modern science can point the way to an approach to politics that is more sophisticated than either.

In this way the theory of human nature coming out of the cognitive revolution has more in common with the Judeo-Christian theory of human nature, and with the psychoanalytic theory proposed by Sigmund Freud...

Human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution.

Free will, though it makes evil possible, also makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

You are as prone to love as the sun is to shine; it being the most delightful and natural employment of the soul of humans.

I love ambiguity. People are that way. People are very hard to work out. No one is just strong or just fragile, or anything like that.

Love can make even nice people do awful things.

Love is ruthless; it doesn't feel sorry for anyone, but it does have compassion. Fear is full of pity; it feels sorry for everyone.

Love is always being given where it is not required.

I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.

We fancy we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.

Even if we love someone very much, at times it happens that we forget about it.

Antipathy, dissimilarity of views, hate, contempt, can accompany true love.