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Identity is as foreign to science as the good, and just as the good is reduced to something palpable, one’s own is raised to something vaguer but shareable.

— Harvey Mansfield How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

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More quotes by Harvey Mansfield

Sociobiology reduces the human to the animal instead of observing how the animal becomes human.

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

The demand for more civility in politics today should be directed toward improving the quality of our insults, seeking civility in wit rather than blandness.

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

The simplified notion of self-interest used by our political and social science cannot tolerate the tension between one’s own and the good, for that tension leaves human behavior unpredictable.

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

To overcome the resistance to truth, literature makes use of fictions that are images of truth.

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

People want to stand for something, which means opposing those who stand for something else.

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

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Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

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To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Harvey Mansfield (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.