Trait Quotes - page 3
Because of his social position there are left no limits to the power lust of the modern capitalist. He can interfere with inconsiderate egoism in the lives of his fellowmen and play the part of Providence for others. Only when we take into consideration this passionate urge for political power over their own people as well as over foreign nations are we able really to understand the character of the typical representatives of modern capitalism. It is just this trait which makes them so dangerous to the social structure of the future.
Rudolf Rocker
We take love for granted. We assume we are all perfect lovers and all we need do is wait and our love will grow and blossom as readily as a flower in spring. Not so. Love doesn't grow unless we do. It takes patience, knowledge, experience, determination, and every positive trait we possess. In addition, love is always changing and unless we stay aware and change with it, it eludes us.
Leo Buscaglia
Combativeness was, I suppose, the dominant trait in my grandmother's nature. An aggressive churchgoer, she was quite without Christian feeling; the mercy of the Lord Jesus had never entered her heart. Her piety was an act of war against the Protestant ascendancy [...] articles attacking birth control, divorce, mixed marriages, Darwin and secular education were her favourite reading. The teachings of the Church did not interest her, except as they were a rebuke to others [...] The extermination of Protestantism, rather than spiritual perfection, was the boon she prayed for.
Mary McCarthy
Armon Jarles, there is only the cosmos and the electronic entities that constitute it, without soul or purpose, save so far as neuronic minds impose purpose upon it.
"Armon Jarles, the Hierarchy embodies the highest form of such purpose.
"Armon Jarles, the supernatural and the idealized have one trait in common. They are not. There is only reality.
Fritz Leiber
We are programmed to find sex pleasurable for one simple reason-because animals who mate have offspring. Those who do not mate have none. Traits that result in successful reproduction get reinforced and passed on. Evolution is that simple.
It is therefore useless to bemoan as evil the fact that men tend toward aggression. Among our ancestors, aggression often helped males have more offspring than their competitors. "Good” and "evil” had little to do with it.
That is, until we reached consciousness, at which point, good and evil became pertinent indeed! Behaviors which might be excusable in dumb beasts can seem perverted, criminal, when performed by thinking beings. Just because a trait is "natural” does not oblige us to keep it.
David Brin
She is in other words a classic demagogue,” said von Bek..."It was Hitler's secret that he could seem one thing to one group and an entirely different thing to another. That is how they rise so swiftly to power. These creatures are bizarre. They can virtually change shape and colour. They have an amophous quality and yet at the same time they have a will to dominate others which is unrelenting, almost their only consistent trait, their only reality.
Michael Moorcock
Socialism is, essentially, the tendency inherent in an industrial civilization to transcend the self-regulating market by consciously subordinating it to a democratic society. It is the solution natural to the industrial workers who see no reason why production should not be regulated directly and why markets should be more than a useful but subordinate trait in a free society. From the point of view of the community as a whole, socialism is merely the continuation of that endeavor to make society a distinctively human relationship of persons which in Western Europe was always associated with Christian traditions.
Karl Polanyi
What I admire in the ancient philosophers is their desire to make their lives conform to their writings, a trait which we notice in Plato, Theophrastus and many others. Practical morality was so truly their philosophy's essence that many, such as Xenocrates, Polemon, and Speusippus, were placed at the head of schools although they had written nothing at all. Socrates was none the less the foremost philosopher of his age, although he had not composed a single book or studied any other science than ethics.
Nicolas Chamfort
In regard to matter after critical matter – the Aryan-Dravidian divide, the nature of Islamic invasions, the nature of Islamic rule, the character of the freedom struggle – we find this trait – suppresso veri, suggesto falsi. This is the real scandal of history writing in the last thirty years. And it has been possible for these ‘eminent historians' to perpetrate it because they acquired control of institutions like the ICHR. To undo the falsehood, the control has to be undone.
Arun Shourie