Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

But men are men; the best sometimes forget.

Every generation always thinks it was better before, and I think people have been saying this for probably thousands of years.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

I am not some goddess that dropped down from the sky to sing pop music; I am not some extra-incredible human person that needs to be told how wonderful they are all day and kissed.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

General consultant to mankind.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‚War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.‘

What an ugly beast the ape, and how like us.

We conceal it from ourselves in vain – we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine.

I find myself hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

It’s human nature to gripe, but I’m going ahead and doing the best I can.

Strength and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest.

The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that’s all. So we direct our values to material things.

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

Of course humans like to explore, and we should. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s more than that. It’s essential for your children and your children’s children.

Nature is not human hearted.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

You just want something else that someone else has, but that doesn’t mean what you have isn’t beautiful, because people always want what you have, and you always want what they have – no one is ever 100 per cent like, ‚Yes, I’m the bomb dot com – from head to toe!‘

The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.

Man’s nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.

To do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, is to be a god.

Really I don’t like human nature unless all candied over with art.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.

I never expect to see a perfect work from an imperfect man.

As pessimistic as I am about the nature of human beings and our capacity for atrocity and malevolence and betrayal and laziness and inertia, and all those things, I think we can transcend all that and set things straight.

If you’re going to wake up early all the time, and you’re working hard, and you’re working out, sometimes you’re going to get tired. It’s OK. It’s acceptable – somewhat. We’re all human, unfortunately.

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.