David Harsanyi Quotes

As times change, so do the way each generation see the world. It is rather like the way our generation came to see our grandparents' views on the Empire and colonies as outdated.

Life used to be a rite of passage in and of itself. But it's not our parents' generation anymore.

A liberal education rests on the assumption that nature and human nature do not change very much or very fast and that one therefore needs to understand the past.

The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result.

Each generation confronts new problems, encounters new facts, and tells our history somewhat differently.

Man's law changes with his understanding of man. Only the laws of the spirit always remain the same.

We will pass on a document will not have exactly the same meaning it had when we received it from our fathers.

Civilization develops man, and if he is, according to his whole character and destiny, made for development, civilization is his truly natural state …

Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.

The deeper we trace the political influences in history, the more are we convinced that the "will to power" has up to now been one of the strongest motives in the development of human social forms.

It is common to think of our own time as standing on the apex of human history.

I keep telling these millennials it's all about them to get into politics and start making things happen. They don't care about whether or not someone is gay. They don't care to see contraception taken away or want to even discuss it. They're going forward, not backward.

We presumably believe that most of the technological progress over the arc of humanity to date has been good. I don't see any argument to go back to 1600.

I don't think people change; electronics change, the things we have change, but the way we live doesn't change.

What 'Deadwood' did was to talk about how capitalism started, how civilised society came in, and how that brought its own problems.

We moan and groan all the time about a lack of involvement of young people. But they have taught me a lot about what moves them.

Hell is reimagined by every generation. We have to reinvent the worst so that we can reinvent the best.

We cannot pick a lifestyle and tell two generations after us to live like that. It is impossible.

I think generationally, as human progress does its thing, we are constantly impressed by the upcoming generation.

What's so interesting to me about history is - what's interesting to anyone - is how humans are the same. Their belief systems were so different. They had different metaphysical truths than we do. And yet we're the same.

Revolutions are all based on the false idea that humans and their nature can be changed.

Our parents don't always know what's right. It's a new age.

I think what I would really most like to write about is palm trees and bougainvillea and hummingbirds. I would like to go into the desert and write about salamanders and the Grand Canyon, but history keeps rupturing my experience because politics are everywhere.

Matters change and morals change; men remain.

History is the action and reaction of these two, nature and thought.