Human Depravity Quotes & Sayings

It is not cynical to admit the past has been turned into a fiction. It is a story, not a fact. The real has been erased. Whole eras have been added or removed. Wars have been aggrandized, and human struggle relegated to the margins. Villains are redressed as heroes. Generous, striving, imperfect men and women have been stripped of their flaws or plucked of their virtues and turned into figurines of morality or depravity. Whole societies have been fixed with motive and visions and equanimity where there was none. Suffering has been recast as noble sacrifice! Do you know why the history of the Tower is in such turmoil? Because too many powerful men are fighting for the pen, fighting to write their story over our dead bodies. They know what is at stake: immortality, the character of civilization, and influence beyond the ages. They are fighting to see who gets to mislead our grandchildren. — Josiah Bancroft

Though the outside of human life changes much, the inside changes little. — Edith Hamilton

To read of human depravity in the police reports is one thing, to see it fall like a black shadow across one's life is another. — William John Locke

One of the greatest crimes committed by this present Christian generation is its neglect of the gospel, and it is from this neglect that all our other maladies spring forth. The lost world is not so much gospel hardened as it is gospel ignorant because many of those who proclaim the gospel are also ignorant of its most basic truths. The essential themes that make up the very core of the gospel - the justice of God, the radical depravity of man, the blood atonement, the nature of true conversion, and the biblical basis of assurance - are absent from too many pulpits. Churches reduce the gospel message to a few creedal statements, teach that conversion is a mere human decision, and pronounce assurance of salvation over anyone who prays the sinner's prayer. — Paul David Washer

I am, after all, a thriller writer. I routinely delve into the darkest chambers of the human heart. I've written about murder, kidnapping, depravity, horror, violence, and disfigurement. — Harlan Coben

This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all walls, wherever walls are to be found
I have letters that even the blind will be able to see ... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough,
I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race ... — Friedrich Nietzsche

To me there's only one form of human depravity-the man without a purpose. — Ayn Rand

While devastation created by nature, such as wildfire, tornadoes, and hurricanes, can be far reaching and cause cataclysmic losses, the trauma that haunts our dreams and is the most feared is man-made. Acts of violence and depravity committed by one human being on another are personal in nature and leave those affected by them asking the questions, "Why did it happen to me?" or "Why did it have to happen at all?" With the advent of technology, the general public can view a new atrocity every day on the nightly news somewhere close to their community. — Karen Rodwill Solomon

"Secret migration" across borders is a form of human degradation and evidence of the depravity of the human conscience. — Hassan Blasim

I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, and the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough - I call it the one immortal blemish on the human race. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It's great that I can look up a fact instantly on my cellphone, but I miss the days in my room with a dog-eared, text-heavy paperback, immersed in the statistics of crime and punishment and lunacy, completely alone with the narrative of human depravity. — Russell Smith

It is not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence. — Agnes Repplier

While the culture is constantly focused on fluff and positivity, God's Word offers not just a competing worldview but a contrary one. The Bible is not some retouched photo of the human condition, sanitized to save everyone the heartache of reality. The Bible brings far more than a smiley preacher with platitudes that fade before sunset. The Scriptures bring stark reality, the depravity of the human heart apart from God. His Word declares the dangers of sin using the lives of men and women who needed a front-row seat to learn that all sin brings suffering. These real people are not presented to us as perfect but as those whom God was working on. — James MacDonald

It is not cynical to admit that the past has been turned into a fiction. It is a story, not a fact. The real has been erased. Whole eras have been added and removed. Wars have been aggrandized, and human struggle relegated to the margins. Villains are redressed as heroes. Generous, striving, imperfect men and women have been stripped of their flaws or plucked of their virtues and turned into figurines of morality or depravity. Whole societies have been fixed with motive and vision and equanimity where there was none. Suffering has been recast as noble sacrifice! — Josiah Bancroft

There is another point, which I would much rather see determined; whether the world was always as contemptible, as it appears to me at present? - If the morals of mankind have not contracted an extraordinary degree of depravity, within these thirty years, then must I be infected with the common vice of old men, difficilis, querulus, laudator temporis acti;14 or, which is more probable, the impetuous pursuits and avocations of youth have formerly hindered me from observing those rotten parts of human nature, which now appear so offensively to my observation. — Tobias Smollett

The depravity which sin has produced in human nature extends to the whole of it. There is no part of man's nature which is unaffected by it. Man's nature is all of a piece, and what affects it at all affects it altogether — James Denney

What you might see as depravity is, to me, just another aspect of the human condition. — Asia Argento

In Truth, none seem to have any Title to assert Human Nature to be necessarily and universally evil, but those whose own Minds afford them one Instance of this natural Depravity. — Henry Fielding

When will we see that the depravity of the human heart is not most clearly on display in the gay pride parade or at the abortion clinic? The greatest failures in human experience are not seen in the activist atheist rallying unbelief or the scorning skeptic ridiculing Jesus Christ, or the senseless wars, or baffling famines. The greatest failure in human existence is the failure of Christ-followers to love one another earnestly from a pure heart — James MacDonald

Nevertheless, let no one boast. Just as every man, though he be the greatest genius, has very definite limitations in some one sphere of knowledge, and thus attests his common origin with the essentially perverse and stupid mass of mankind, so also has every man something in his nature which is positively evil. Even the best, nay the noblest, character will sometimes surprise us by isolated traits of depravity; as though it were to acknowledge his kinship with the human race, in which villainy
nay, cruelty
is to be found in that degree. — Arthur Schopenhauer

It's only human,' you cry in defense of any depravity, reaching the stage of self-abasement where you seek to make the concept 'human' mean the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward, the fraud, and to exile from the human race the hero, the thinker, the producer, the inventor, the strong, the purposeful, the pure - as if 'to feel' were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human, but to succeed were not, as if corruption were human, but virtue were not - as if the premise of death were proper to man, but the premise of life were not. — Ayn Rand

Indeed, we often so live as though we had no spirit in us, and the highest degree of human depravity is manifested by the fact that the spirit is completely stifled and the man becomes as though he were flesh alone. — John Of Kronstadt

The art depicts duplicity and depravity," he said, "but its purpose is to counteract the human tendency to fill in the blanks with goodness. We do that instinctively, and in ignorance, to compensate for breaches of the soul so deplorable that we can barely fathom them." I — Anne McAneny

I am bound to the doctrine of the depravity of the human heart, because I find myself depraved in heart, and have daily proofs that in my flesh there dwelleth no good thing. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I know now, from experience, that the path to joy winds through this dark valley. I think every well-adjusted human being has dealt squarely with his or her own depravity. — Donald Miller

As in a tree, there is more sap in an Arm of the tree, than in a little sprig; but the sprig hath the same sap for kind that the Arm of the tree hath, and it all comes from the same root. So though there be more venom in some gross, crying sins, than in some others; yet there is no sin but hath the same sap, and the same venom, for the kind, that every sin hath, that the worst sin hath. — Jeremiah Burroughs

The gospel proceeds on the basis of universal depravity; the gospel assimilates all varieties of human nature into one common experience of guilt and need and helplessness; and this is just what you do not like about it. — William Morley Punshon

Lieutenant al-Kaseasbeh's dedication, courage and service to his country and family represent universal human values that stand in opposition to the cowardice and depravity of ISIL, which has been so broadly rejected around the globe. — Barack Obama

Every artifact of human culture is a positive response to God's general revelation and simultaneously a rebellious assertion against His sovereign rule over us. — Timothy Keller

A small knowledge of human nature will convince us, that, with far the greatest part of mankind, interest is the governing principle ... Few men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good. It is vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature on this account; the fact is so, the experience of every age and nation has proved it and we must in a great measure, change the constitution of man, before we can make it otherwise. No institution, not built on the presumptive truth of these maxims can succeed. — George Washington

It appears an extraordinary thing to me, that since there is such a diabolical spirit in the depravity of human nature, as persecution for difference of opinion in religious tenets, there never happened to be any inquisition, any auto da fe, any crusade, among the Pagans. — Laurence Sterne

In a fallen world marked by human depravity and deep-seated sin, in a world where Hitler and Stalin had recruited millions of followers to commit mass murder, love must harness power and seek justice in order to have moral meaning. Love without power remained impotent, and power without love was bankrupt. — Timothy B. Tyson

Thou hast gone on in all thy life hitherto, ever since thou wast born, in a continual opposition to God Himself, unto the infinite Lord, the eternal first being of all the world; thy life hath been nothing but enmity to this God: thou hast as directly opposed, and striven against, and resisted Him, as ever man did oppose, and resist, and strive with another man, and this thou hast done in the whole course of thy life: certainly there is more in this to humble a man than anything that can be spoken to shew him the evil of sin. — Jeremiah Burroughs

The core of original sin, then is LOT - Lack of Trust. Or, it could be considered an innate inability to adequately value ourselves. Label it a 'negative self-image,' but do not say that the central core of the human soul is wickedness ... positive Christianity does not hold to human depravity, but to human inability. — Robert H. Schuller

Right knowledge, of itself, EVIDENTLY does not bring about moral transformation in human beings - even supposing that right knowledge is something we are predisposed to desire in the first place. It is possible to be highly educated and at the same time morally depraved. There is, in fact, a certain kind of moral depravity that only the highly educated can attain, because it requires sophisticated skills of rationalization and self-deception. — Iain W. Provan

The shop was a monument to uninhibited human depravity, the kind that scars souls with permanent shadows. I — Bobby Adair

The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people — Wendell Phillips

Edward turned to Miss Marple. "It's like this, you see. As Uncle Mathew grew older, he got more and more suspicious. He didn't trust anybody." "Very wise of him," said Miss Marple. "The depravity of human nature is unbelievable. — Agatha Christie

We must recognize that if we feel helpless when facing the record of human depravity, there was always a point at which any particular scene of madness could have been stopped. — Robert H. Abzug

The blessed Religion revealed in the word of God will remain an eternal and awful monument to prove that the best Institution may be abused by human depravity; and that they may even, in some instances be made subservient to the vilest purposes. — George Washington

Sadly enough, some people are insecure in such a way that they cannot bear the thought of the sovereignty of God, the thought of His Being as greater than themselves. It makes them feel insignificant. But I know if I were to worship and obey anything, I would like it far greater than myself or any person or human system, preferably to the point that which it, perhaps, in all its majesty, makes me feel lost and even 'creatural' in my sheer humanity. Only this God - He who is great beyond human measure, yet still considers His creation precious - I find to be more than worthy of praise; otherwise, I bow down and worship nothing. And if the thought of such a superior and almighty God were to indeed offend me, I would have to remember that it is because I am only as significant as the things which I am idolizing, things which are ultimately separating me, the creation, from my original Creator. — Criss Jami

The gospel proclaims human freedom and dignity more than human enslavement and depravity. What is needed is a balance of biblical values and emphasis on the empowering quality of the gospel. The spiritual values of humility, long suffering, endurance, and obedience are to be affirmed alongside self-reliance, freedom, proclamation, mission, and authority. — Henri J.M. Nouwen