Disposition Quotes
More Disposition Quotes
There is a strong disposition in youth, from which some individuals never escape, to suppose that everyone else is having a more enjoyable time than we are ourselves.
— 1952 A Buyer's Market, ch.4.
As Dr. Sigmund Freud has observed, it can not even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime. ... Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.
albert jay nock— p. 50 (Our Enemy, the State (1935))
A feeling generally exists that the condition and disposition of the Working Class is a rather ominous matter at present; that something ought to be said, something ought to be done, in regard to it.
thomas carlyle— 1839 Chartism, ch.1.
I was broken in body, soul and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!
frederick douglass— Ch. 10 (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845))
It [will-making] is the latest opportunity we have of exercising the natural perversity of the disposition ... This last act of our lives seldom belies the former tenor of them for stupidity, caprice, and unmeaning spite. All that we seem to think of is to manage matters so (in settling accounts with those who are so unmannerly as to survive us) as to do as little good, and to plague and disappoint as many people, as possible.
william hazlitt— "On Will-Making"
All men have an equal disposition for understanding.
claude adrien helvétius— p. 286 (De l'esprit or, Essays on the Mind, and Its Several Faculties (1758))
I know that even the meanest person has still at his disposition high-sounding words wherewith to mask his real character.
henryk sienkiewicz— 11 July
This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise or, at least, neglect persons of poor and mean conditions, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.
Adam Smith— Section III, Chap. II
By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound,
Adam Smith— Chapter II, p. 17
But this (a listing of illustrations of how the genome can change other than by mutations) doesn’t constitute a crisis it’s a very interesting finding that shows that variation in a genome can arise by processes other than mutation of an organism’s own DNA. The disposition of that variation still must occur via either natural selection (it can be good or bad) or genetic drift (no effect on fitness). This hasn’t really changed the theory of evolution one iota, though it’s changed our view of where organisms can acquire new genes.
jerry coyne— "Another philosopher proclaims a nonexistent “crisis” in evolutionary biology" September 7, 2012
The essence of good and evil is a certain disposition of the will.
epictetus— Of Courage, Chap. xxix.
Let me formulate the artistic disposition as follows: it is reacting with one’s ideal to the flaw in oneself and in the world, and somehow making that reaction formation solid enough in the medium so that it indeed becomes an improved bit of real world for others.
paul goodman— p. 176 (Growing Up Absurd (1956))
I have an epic, not a dramatic nature. My disposition and my desires call for peace to spin my thread, for a steady rhythm in life and art.
thomas mann— Nobel Banquet Speech (10 December 1929)
Whenever the general disposition of the people is such, that each individual regards those only of his interests which are selfish, and does not dwell on, or concern himself for, his share of the general interest, in such a state of things, good government is impossible.
john stuart mill— Ch. II: The Criterion of a Good Form of Government (p. 167)
Virtue refuses facility for her companion ... the easy, gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.
Michel de Montaigne— Book II, ch. 11
Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family. But here again, because there is nothing to sell, there is a very general disposition to regard a married woman's work as no work at all, and to take it as a matter of course that she should not be paid for it.
George Bernard Shaw— The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, Chapter 8 (1928)
I regard Shelley's early 'atheism' and later Pantheism, as simply the negative and the affirmative side of the same progressive but harmonious life-creed. In his earlier years his disposition was towards a vehement denial of a theology which he never ceased to detest; in his maturer years he made more frequent reference to the great World Spirit in whom he had from the first believed. He grew wiser in the exercise of his religious faith, but the faith was the same throughout; there, was progression, but no essential change.
Percy Bysshe Shelley— Henry Stephens Salt in Percy Bysshe shelley, Poet and Pioneer (1913).
We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.
smith, joseph, jr.— D&C 121:39
Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations... In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.
alexis de tocqueville— Book Two, Chapter V
If you consider that the constant tenor of the gospel precepts is to promote love, peace, and good-will amongst men, you will not doubt that the cultivation of an amiable disposition is a great part of your religious duty; since nothing leads more directly to the breach of charity, and to the injury and molestation of our fellow-creatures than the indulgence of an ill- temper.
— Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 363.
Antisthenes used to say that envious people were devoured by their own disposition, just as iron is by rust.
— Antisthenes, 4.
My master is of churlish disposition And little recks to find the way to heaven By doing deeds of hospitality.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act II, scene 4, line 80.
This is always the way in which the reality of Christian conversion evidences itself. It makes the selfish man charitable: the churlish, liberal; and implants in the soul, which hitherto has cared only for the things belonging to himself, a disposition to seek also the things of others.
— William Adams, p. 163. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
— Baruch Spinoza, in Theological-Political treatise (1670)
I know the disposition of women: when you will, they won't; when you won't, they set their hearts upon you of their own inclination.
— Act IV, scene 7, 42, line 812.
Good fortune and a good disposition are rarely given to the same man.
— Book XXX, sec. 42 (History of Rome)
When we read in the valuable production of those great Oriental scholars...those of a Jones, a Wilkings, a Colebrooke, or a Halhed, - we uniformly discover in the Hindus a nation, whose polished manners are the result of a mild disposition and an extensive benevolence.
— Alexander Hamilton [32] (Quotes on Hinduism)
