Quotes About Individuals

The Left regards the Constitution as defective and outmoded - in part because it impedes the government's ability to control institutions, like churches and families, which stand between the state and individuals.

I think that in today's world, by nature, we are all self-centered. And that often leads to selfishness.

In a highly formalized organization, individuals tend to be hyperfocused on their own, unit-specific goals. Everything else is a distraction. Unfortunately, the future seldom lines up with the org chart. Parochialism not only makes new opportunities hard to spot, but hard to resource. Unit leaders often feel they have insufficient resources to deliver on their own commitments, let alone someone else's. Share resources, and you risk missing your targets.

But they can explain a great deal. The circumstances into which people are born and the range of opportunities to which they are exposed shape both the choices available to them and the process by which they make those choices even if they, ultimately, still make the choice. I have yet to meet anyone who denies that individuals have free will. But I also have yet to meet anyone who makes a convincing argument that circumstances don't shape what you can do with that will.

He saw them as a mob, carried away by their own bloodlust, and just as easily manipulated by their rulers as their entertainers. A crowd of otherwise intelligent or moderate individuals, could become a hive of unthinking insects, hornets incited by a wave of the hand or the proclamation of a meaningless slogan.

sounds absurd, but Nilsen may partly have murdered in anguished assault against social injustice; he was not killing individuals, but society itself.

When addressing politics, we must accustom ourselves to think and speak about the actions and interests of specific, named leaders rather than thinking and talking about fuzzy ideas like the national interest, the common good, and the general welfare. Once we think about what helps leaders come to and stay in power, we will also begin to see how to fix politics. Politics, like all of life, is about individuals, each motivated to do what is good for them, not what is good for others.

The protective effects of social connection were present even for individuals who were at higher risk for depression as a result of genetic vulnerability or early life trauma.

It allows us as Christians to come alongside individuals, to listen to their questions (or even prod them into asking questions), to answer the questions within the framework of their own (defective) worldview, and then to explain a Christian worldview, the need for Christ's saving work, and the reasons why we have accepted the gospel

I agree with Schaeffer that many people do not so much reject Christianity as fail to even consider it because of their presuppositions (however hidden they may be), and therefore they need to be challenged. Apart from those who have gained their presuppositions unconsciously from the society around them, Schaeffer also recognized that some individuals try to bury themselves in themselves, for "down inside of himself, man finds it easy to lie to himself.

A belief in immortality not only consoles the individual, but it exerts a powerful influence in bringing peace between individuals. If one actually thinks that man dies as the brute dies, he will yield more easily to the temptation to do injustice to his neighbor when the circumstances are such as to promise security from detection. But if one really expects to meet again, and live eternally with those whom he knows today, he is restrained from evil deeds by the fear of endless remorse.

We only hate the results of people. But people, Henry, aren't just results. They're a process.

The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

The toiling masses,' and all that. This country has no toiling masses, we have Dan at the diner and Verne in the mine and Jerry in the steel mill and Burdette at the filling station and so on. They don't toil, for Christ's sake, they do a day's work and then they go home and have a beer. You can't get them into a mass for anything. If there's a good ball game on TV they won't come out to see the president ride by.

To form correct views of individuals we must regard them as forming parts of a great whole — we must measure them by their relation to the mass of beings by whom they are surrounded, and, in contemplating the incidents in their lives or condition which tradition has handed down to us, we must rather consider the general bearing of the whole narrative, than the respective probability of its details.

To form correct views of individuals we must regard them as forming parts of a great whole-we must measure them by their relation tot the mass of beings by whom they are surrounded; and, in contemplating the incidents in their lives or condition which tradition has handed down to us, we must rather consider the general bearing of the whole narrative, than the respective probability of its details.

individuals will sacrifice themselves for the good of a larger whole. When groups struggle, the ones which boast the most effective organization, strategy, and weapons win. Individuals who contribute to their group's virtuosity will be part of the team which survives.

an enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive of the common happiness, of mankind; and therefore every free state hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property.

It was an example of a common phenomenon in American journalism (perhaps in social criticism in general), the shallow focusing on agents or on individuals, thus concealing what a deeper analysis would reveal—the failure of the government itself, indeed, of the political system.

In light of the decades-long failure by Israeli authorities to rein in serious abuses, the International Criminal Court's Office of the Prosecutor should investigate and prosecute individuals credibly implicated in the crimes against humanity of apartheid or persecution.

States should impose individual sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against officials and individuals responsible for the continued commission of these serious crimes and condition arms sales and military and security assistance to Israel on Israeli authorities taking concrete and verifiable steps towards ending their commission of the crimes of apartheid and persecution.

although individuals and small events did affect the course of historical development, the influence of even major figures was strictly limited. In

It might be said that much work in cultural studies tends to center on an analysis of individuals as part of such larger social groups, especially race, class, and gender. Yet it might be beneficial to reconsider our scales of analysis in the process of doing ethnographic research by thinking in terms of relatively small social networks.

Virtue is too passive, too narrow. Virtue can motivate individuals, but for groups, societies, a whole civilisation, it's a weak force. Nations are never virtuous, though they might sometimes think they are.