Many people come to self-help material because they feel like something is wrong with them or the way they are. The problem is that anything that tells you how to improve your life is also implying that there is something inherently wrong with you the way you are.
Mencius said that human nature is good. I disagree with that.
My pessimism (which, by the way, is far from absolute) originated with my despair in the lack of perfection to be found in human nature. I was attempting in my successive books to show the inevitable handicap of the human condition.
Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.
Aus so krummen Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden. Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made.
Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of everything.
Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can ever be made.
People cain't help being what they are any more than a skunk can help being a skunk. Don't you think if they had their choice they would rather be something else? Sure they would. People are just weak.
All human belief systems are inherently flawed.
Anything devised by man has bureaucracy, corrpution and error hardwired at inception.
The battle we are fighting is not against a particular group. It is against human nature - or at least what it has become.
If people are innately saddled with certain sins and flaws, like selfishness, prejudice, sort-sightedness, and self-deception, then political reform would seem to be a waste of time.
Historically, if you look at great civilizations, why do they crumble? Is it because of what's outside or because of something internal? It's always internal. It is.
No other scheme than that of public ownership can insure to the peoples of this country, without regard to class or place, equal enjoyment of the benefits and pleasures of radio broadcasting .... this is not a correctable fault in private ownership; it is an inescapable and inherent demerit of that system.
In truth, feminism is flawed because it is a movement powered by people and people are inherently flawed.
To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species.
Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves by railing at it; and yet it is not absolutely railing against anything, to proclaim its defects, because they are in all things to be found, how beautiful or how much to be coveted soever.
But no perfection is so absolute, That some impurity doth not pollute.
They are perfect; how else?-they shall never change: We are faulty; why not?-we have time in store.
Even if one succeeds in making a silk purse out of a sow's ear, there remains the problem of what to do with a one-eared sow.
Flawed, imperfect creatures! That's what we both are, oga! That's what we ALL are!
From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.
I think it's unfair to punish players for inherent faults in the game.
We must take human nature as we find it, perfection falls not to the share of mortals.
It is to be lamented that great characters are seldom without a blot.
