Henry Fielding Quotes

What we believe as human nature in actuality is human habit.

Human behavior is subject to the same laws as any other natural phenomenon. Our customs, behaviors, and values are byproducts of our culture. No one is born with greed, prejudice, bigotry, patriotism and hatred; these are all learned behavior patterns. If the environment is unaltered, similar behavior will reoccur.

Temperament lies behind mood; behind will, lies the fate of character. Then behind both, the influence of family the tyranny of culture; and finally the power of climate and environment; and we are free, only to the extent we rise above these.

Man is a child of his environment.

We're all influenced by everything unless we're locked in an empty room.

Evil is not intrinsic. It's fashioned.

We are all victims of culture.

The new human type cannot be properly understood without awareness of what he is continuously exposed to from the world of things about him, even in his most secret innervations.

The phrase 'nature and nurture' is a convenient jingle of words, for it separates under two distinct heads the innumerable elements of which personality is composed. Nature is all that a man brings with himself into the world; nurture is every influence without that affects him after his birth.

To be sure, we have inherited abilities, but our development we owe to thousands of influences coming from the world around us from which we appropriate what we can and what is suitable to us.

Man is the child of customs, not the child of his ancestors.

A mind cannot be independent of culture.

That human behavior is more influenced by things outside of us than inside. The 'situation' is the external environment. The inner environment is genes, moral history, religious training.

Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.

There is no escaping from the conclusion that nature prevails enormously over nurture.

Improvement in social conditions will not compensate for a bad hereditary influence.

We can understand both our nature and our nurture, but understanding is only the first step.

Everyone is a product of their own environment, and that, I think, has actually been the key lesson for me.

Nature is seldom in the wrong, custom always.

I think that man is conditioned to violence.

The difference between a serial killer and a saint is environment. That's a very hard thing to accept because that raises a lot of questions

People are always talking about originality, but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us, and this goes on to the end.

Human behavior is timeless.

We found out that you can't pass on acquired things like bigotry, prejudice, greed. That's all learned in your culture or your sub-culture