Total depravity- christiansquoting.org.uk

If you think that there is good in everybody, you haven't met everybody.

I do not know what the heart of a bad man is like, but I do know what the heart of a good man is like... and it is terrible.

Every new generation is a fresh invasion of savages. --Hervey Allen, "Anthony Adverse"

You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.-- Aristophanes

The bad man is continually at war with, and in opposition to, himself. -- Aristotle

The doctrine of Total Inability, which declares that men are dead in sin, does not mean that all men are equally bad, nor that any man is as bad as he could be, nor that any one is entirely destitute of virtue, nor that human nature is evil in itself, nor that man's spirit is inactive, and much less does it mean that the body is dead. What it does mean is that since the fall man rests under the curse of sin, that he is actuated by wrong principles, and that he is wholly unable to love God or to do anything meriting salvation. His corruption is extensive but not necessarily intensive. -- Boettner

There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men.--Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 249.

At this day... the earth sustains on her bosom many monster minds, minds which are not afraid to employ the seed of Deity deposited in human nature as a means of suppressing the name of God. Can anything be more detestable than this madness in man, who, finding God a hundred times both in his body and his soul, makes his excellence in this respect a pretext for denying that there is a God? He will not say that chance has made him different from the brutes; ... but, substituting Nature as the architect of the universe, he suppresses the name of God. -- John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion

Man with all his shrewdness is as stupid about understanding by himself the mysteries of God, as an ass is incapable of understanding musical harmony.
Calvin on 1Cor 1:20.

We are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow-worm.-- Winston Churchill

If man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend on it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast.--Samuel Taylor Coleridge, _Table Talk_, August 30, 1833

Denying the Enlightenment doctrine of a person‚s innate goodness, evangelicals believe in the total depravity of humanity. All the goodness that exists in human nature is tainted by sin, and no dimension of life is free from its effects. Humanity was originally created perfect; but through the fall sin entered the race, making people corrupt at the very core of their being, and this spiritual infection has been passed on from generation to generation. Sin is not an inherent weakness or ignorance but positive rebellion against God‚s law. It is moral and spiritual blindness and bondage to powers beyond one‚s control. The root of sin is unbelief, and its manifestations are pride, lust for power, sensuousness, selfishness, fear, and disdain for spiritual things. The propensity to sin is within a person from birth, its power cannot be broken by human effort, and the ultimate result is complete and permanent separation from the presence of God. - Pierard, R.V. and Elwell, W.A. (1984 & 2001). "Evangelicalism." In W. Elwell (Ed.), *Evangelical Dictionary of Theology* (pp. 405-410). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Most people are just selfish and egocentric, wanting what they want, when they want it, without regard to the rest of society. The vast majority of people are cave-men in designer clothes, without morals or ethics. -- Frederick A. Farris, Las_Vegas_Sun (Thu 25 Apr 2002)

I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect men. - Alexander Hamilton

Look into any man's heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed.
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), _Pillars of Society_

He who undertakes to guide men must never lose sight of the fact that they are malicious monkeys.... The folly of the revolution was in aiming to establish virtue on the earth. When you want to make men good and wise, free, moderate, generous, you are led inevitably to the desire of killing them all.
Anatole France(1844-1924)

Alongside getting faith out of a heart that is utterly hostile and unbelieving, making a silk purse out of a sow's ear or getting blood from a turnip is child's play. JOHN GERTSNER

Seward: "One should think that sickness, and the view of death, would make more men religious."
Johnson: "Sir, they do not know how to go about it: they have not the first notion. A man who has never had religion before, no more grows religious when he is sick, than a man who has never learnt figures can count when he has need of calculation." - James Boswell: Life of Johnson

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.-- Samuel Johnson

Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild. --Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)

In youth, in middle age, and now after many battles, I find nothing in me but corruption. --John Knox (1505-1572) [Scottish Protestant reformer]

We are all fallen creatures and all very hard to live with. --CS Lewis

Man's problem has never been not knowing what he should do. His problem, rather, has been that he lacks power to do what he knows he should. Paul E.Little

It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone˜that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. The men of the educated minority, no doubt, know more than their predecessors, and of some of them, perhaps, it may be said that they are more civilized˜though I should not like to be put to giving names˜but the greatmasses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge.
H. L. Mencken, "Homo neanderthalis", The Baltimore Evening Sun, June 29, 1925

It's silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars, hypocrites, poltroons. -- Henry Miller

Worm theology is too high for me. -- Jack Miller

"You do not think highly of men, Mr Eliot." "I am one," I said. --C. P. Snow, _The Light & the Dark_

The Human Race has improved everything except the Human Race.-- Adlai Stevenson

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.-- Mark Twain Following the Equator, Chapt. XXX, Vol I

I do not wish to divulge or publish this because of the evil nature of men. ~ Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519, quoted in Serge Bramly , Leonardo (1988) - writing in his Notebook on his invention of a method of remaining underwater to sink ships.

The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,....neither can he know them' (1 Cor. 2:14). He may have more insight into the things of the world than a believer, but he does not see the deep things of God. A swine may see an acorn under a tree, but he cannot see a star. - THOMAS WATSON

Man, by his Fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.
Westminster Confession.. Of Free Will

Some natural skepticism as to the purity of all human motives came and sat upon my chest.--ZELAZNY, ROGER (1937-1995){Nine Princes in Amber, 1970}