John Shelby Spong Quotes

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

There is nothing wrong with having competitive instincts. They are survival instincts.

Even if they don't know it, everyone has the instinct to survive.

The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.

The law of the survival of the fittest led inevitably to the survival and predominance of the men who were effective in war and who loved it because they were effective.

It is unfair to blame man too fiercely for being pugnacious; he learned the habit from Nature.

We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.

Struggle is the father of all things. It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle.

Self-preservation, nature's first great law, all the creatures, except man, doth awe.

Human nature is such that people are born with a love of profit If they follow these inclinations, they will struggle and snatch from each other, and inclinations to defer or yield will die.

I think that genetically we're programmed to battle each other.

Without game, men prey on each other.

We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light.

It goes without saying that when survival is threatened, struggles erupt between peoples, and unfortunate wars between nations result.

All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost - the most legitimate - passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one.

If I'm walking down the riverbank, and a man is drowning, even if I don't know how to swim very well, I feel this urge that the right thing to do is to try to save that person. Evolution would tell me exactly the opposite: preserve your DNA. Who cares about the guy who's drowning?

Man is a competitive creature, and the seeds of conflict are built deep into our genes. We fought each other on the savannah and only survived against great odds by organising ourselves into groups which would have had a common purpose, giving morale and fortitude.

Man is a predatory animal, and this aspect of his nature is nowhere better suited by environment than in the world of politics.

At the narrow passage there is no brother and no friend

The strongest absorbs the weakest, and he has a right to do so.

People are violent by nature. That’s why we rule the earth; we beat the crap out of everyone else.

The most frequent reason why men desire to hurt each other, ariseth hence, that many men at the same time have an Appetite to the same thing; which yet very often they can neither enjoy in common, nor yet divide it.

Societies organized for the interplay of individual self-interest can collapse into manic tribalism, if not nihilistic violence.

In our family, if you weren't competitive, you didn't eat. You had to fight for what you wanted.

Surviving is not something you need to learn. You don't need to learn survival skills; you have them already. That's why we're here, all of us, because it's a game of survival anyway.