A Quote by James Madison

The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.

James Madison

Quote Topics

Against Ambition Avarice Conspiracy Dangerous Desire Duty Fame Honorable Human Love Most Passions Peace Strongest Vanity Weaknesses

Quote Author

James Madison
American - President
March 16, 1751 - June 28, 1836

They sin who tell us Love can die: With life all other passions fly, All others are but vanity, In Heaven Ambition cannot dwell, Nor Avarice in the vaults of Hell.

Robert Southey

I never engaged in public affairs for my own interest, pleasure, envy, jealousy, avarice or ambition, or even the desire of fame

John Adams

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.

John Adams

This position will not be disputed so long as it is admitted that the desire of reward is one of the strongest incentives of human conduct, or that the best security for the fidelity of mankind is to make their interest coincide with their duty. Even the love of fame, the ruling passion of the noblest minds... would on the contrary deter him from the undertaking, when he foresaw that he must quit the scene before he could accomplish the work.

Alexander Hamilton

Men crowd into honorable careers without other vocation than their vanity, or at best their love of fame.

Luc de Clapiers

Vanity is the most dangerous thing about fame.

Cat Stevens

The strongest knowledge (that of the total freedom of the human will) is nonetheless the poorest in successes: for it always has the strongest opponent, human vanity.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The strongest and most evil spirits have to date advanced mankind the most: they always rekindled the sleeping passions - all orderly arranged society lulls the passions to sleep; they always reawakened the sense of comparison, of contradiction, of delight in the new, the adventurous, the untried; they compelled men to set opinion against opinion, ideal plan against ideal plan.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The three most harmful negative emotions are anger, guilt, and fear. And anger is number one. It is also the strongest and most dangerous of all passions.

Joyce Meyer

Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.

Petrarch

The desire of reward is one of the strongest incentives of human conduct; ... the best security for the fidelity of mankind is to make their interest coincide with their duty.

Alexander Hamilton

The most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.

Karl Marx

I have long been settled in my own opinion that neither Philosophy, nor Religion, nor Morality, nor Wisdom, nor Interest, will ever govern nations or Parties, against their vanity, their Pride, their Resentment, or Revenge, or their Avarice, or Ambition. Nothing but Force and Power and Strength can restrain them.

John Adams

Although the progress of civilisation has undoubtedly contributed to assuage the fiercer passions of human nature, it seems to have been less favourable to the virtue of chastity, whose most dangerous enemy is the softness of the mind. The refinements of life corrupt while they polish the intercourse of the sexes. The gross appetite of love becomes most dangerous when it is elevated, or rather, indeed, disguised by sentimental passion.

Edward Gibbon

Envy, jealousy, ambition, any kind of greed are passions; love is an action, the practice of human power, which can be practiced only in freedom and never as a result of compulsion. Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a "standing in," not a "falling for." In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.