"Perfectibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a determination of it, from the enmity of the opposing parties—The principal argument against the perfectibility of man and of society has never been fairly answered—Nature of the difficulty arising from population—Outline of the ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... answer, and, forgetful that it was impossible to answer a cry of anguish, Owen began to suspect Beclere of thoughts regarding the perfectibility of mankind, of thinking that with patience and more perfect administration, &c. But Beclere was thinking nothing of the kind; he was wondering what sort of reason could have sent Owen out of England. Some desperate love affair perhaps, his ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... blessed results of the employment of all in congenial occupations, and the contentment of each with his lot! You should also be able to realise the ever-multiplying inventions and discoveries resulting from our system, all tending to promote human perfectibility and happiness, every successive step being assisted by the one preceding, as well as by innumerable co-operations, all tending to ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... philosophy, which believed in ennui as an evidence and a means of human perfectibility. The only exertions which it is capable of producing, are of a subordinate character. It may give to passion a fearful intensity, consequent on a state of moral disease; but human virtue must be the result of far higher causes. The exercise of principle, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... on let us observe, that were it not for this conviction of the divine origin, and consequent perfectibility of our nature, the very thought of God would be painful to us. God is so great, so glorious, that the mind is overwhelmed by, and shrinks from, the contemplation of His excellence, unless there comes the tender, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... of the nature and causes of variability; and the reader will find in the present work an able discussion on the whole subject, which will probably lead him to pause before he admits the existence of an innate tendency to perfectibility"—or towards BEING ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... scholars, divines, heroes, poets! Do you want exemplars worthy of study and imitation? Where will you find them brighter than in Scotland? Where can you find them purer than in Scotland? Here, no Solon, indulging imagination, has pictured the perfectibility of man; no Lycurgus, viewing him through the medium of human frailty alone, has left for his government an iron code, graven on eternal adamant; no Plato, dreaming in the luxurious gardens of the Academy, has fancied what he should be, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... is based upon a faith in the perfectibility of man and the possibility of the regeneration of society. It leads from a desire to live one's own life according to high principles to a desire to establish similar principles in human institutions. It rejects the thesis of Reinhold Niebuhr that social groups can never ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... man, casting aside old shackles and prejudices, could advance at once towards knowledge, joy, splendour, both for himself and all his fellows. Shelley, perhaps, is most typical of what I mean. Hogg laughed at him for his belief in the 'perfectibility' of the race, but Hogg knew the belief was vital to the poet. To Shelley it was a damnable doctrine that the many should ever be sacrificed to the few: yet neither was the ultimate vision that inspired ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... in human perfectibility know that this dragoon, capable of a blush, did this virtuous action, albeit with violent reluctance; and this was his first damper. A week after these events he was at a ball. He was in that state of factitious discontent which belongs to us ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... desecrated in its wild convulsions. Perhaps in his subsequent writings we can trace a more respectful feeling towards old establishments; more reverence for the majesty of Custom; and with an equal zeal, a weaker faith in human perfectibility: changes indeed which are the common fruit of years themselves, in whatever age or climate of the world our experience ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... which embrace our Revolutionary period we find abundance of theory, but they were never carried by abstractions out of sight of the practical. Our publicists were not misled by convictions of the "infinite perfectibility of the human mind," the motive proclaimed by Condorcet, writing in sweet obliviousness of the guillotine, as explaining "how much more pure, accurate and profound are the principles upon which the constitution and laws of France have been formed than those which directed the Americans." The lack ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... men are Unitarians, a creed peculiarly acceptable to the pride and self-sufficiency of our nature, asserting, as it does, the independence and perfectibility of man, and denying the necessity of atonement or ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... peculiar to the theologians; we find it expressed in equivalent language in the philosophical writings of the materialists, believers in infinite perfectibility. Destutt de Tracy teaches formally that poverty, crime, and war are the inevitable conditions of our social state; necessary evils, against which it would be folly to revolt. So, call it NECESSITY OF EVIL or ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY, it is at bottom the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... which in general have been considered as belonging to the other side of the question. He quizzed Mr. Owen most unmercifully; pinched him here for his parallelograms; hit him there for his human perfectibility, and kept the whole audience in a roar of laughter. Mr. Owen joined in it most heartily himself, and listened to him throughout with the air of a man who is delighted at the good things he is hearing, and exactly ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... highest conceivable grade of perfection of social existence." Not at all. What it does involve is the highest conceivable grade of individual existence; in fact, of a grade so high that it is quite beyond conception,—in short, it involves human perfectibility. Anarchy proper involves the complete emancipation of every individual from all restraints and compulsions; it involves a social condition wherein absolutely no authority is imposed upon any individual, where ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... the spirituality of Shelley, the perfectibility of man. This is the way in which we fulfil the commandment, 'Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.' This is Saint Paul's, 'Now I know in part; but then shall I know ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... their wisdom to obey implicitly,—in such a state of society it is vain to look either for true dignity of individual character, or for the developement of powers which elevate both nations and private men in the scale of human perfectibility. Practically speaking, men may enjoy as much freedom of action as they could desire; and their persons and their property will alike be secured from violence; but there is not, nor can there be, real contentment anywhere,—no, not even in the ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... "They declaim with warmth on the miseries of mankind, the abuses of government, and the vices of rulers; all which they engage to remove, providing their theories should once be adopted. They talk of the perfectibility of man and of the dignity of his nature; and, entirely forgetting what he is, declaim perpetually about what he should be." Of Jacobins there are plenty. They profit by the labors of others; tyrants in power, demagogues when not. Fortunately for America there are ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... lost in amazement. "But," he exclaims, "you must admit that. By what theory of approximation can you show that we do not attain to such perfectibility of number; unless you would say, as I have heard advanced by the Budengen school, that the expression is but a formula adapted to ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... perspectives were truer. Experience had given her an insight into the characters of men which is not to be gained in the library, nor in the worship of dead heroes. If it had not shaken her faith in human perfectibility, it had taught her at least the value of tradition in ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason |
