Human nature is not totally fixed, but on any realistic scale, evolutionary processes are much too slow to affect it.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

What religion a man holds, to what race he belongs, these things are not important; the really important thing is this knowledge: the knowledge of God’s plan for men. For God has a plan, and that plan is evolution.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness… and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.

A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.

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.

I have talked with great men, and I do not see how they differ from others.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

Acorns were good until bread was found.

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.

I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things, they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can ‚solve the climate crisis.‘ But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change.

Man consists of two parts, his mind and his body, only the body has more fun.

Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.

Many things shall change in Cuba, but they shall change because of our efforts and despite the United States. Perhaps that empire shall crumble first.

A new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn; for in man’s heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree.

Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.

The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don’t like having the dead wood burnt off, often because they’re 95 percent dead wood.

If you want small changes in your life, work on your attitude. But if you want big and primary changes, work on your paradigm.

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

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 aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

I think my message to the politicians who have within their power the ability to make change is, ‚Do you really, really not care about the future of your great-grandchildren? Because if we let the world continue to be destroyed the way we are now, what’s the world going to be like for your great-grandchildren?‘

I’m never in the same place for more than, like, three days at a time. Things can change from one minute to the next.

I believe that one person can make a difference.

It is a true rule that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque or with an inward and secret contempt.

Nothing endures but change.

Friendships, in general, are suddenly contracted; and therefore it is no wonder they are easily dissolved.

Do not let circumstances control you. You change your circumstances.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.

Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails.

There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.

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.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.

The flesh, or human nature, is generally lazy and self-centered.

I am not a victim of emotional conflicts. I am human.

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

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

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

People’s minds are changed through observation and not through argument.

We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that’s going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it.

Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are. We have mortally wounded this sweet life-supporting planet – the only one in the whole Milky Way – with a century of transportation whoopee.

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

We must accept what science tells us, that man was born from the earth. But, more logical than the scientists who lecture us, we must carry this lesson to its conclusion: that is to say, accept that man was born entirely from the world – not only his flesh and bones but his incredible power of thought.

The name Zahra was to have been lman’s own name at birth, but a senior member of the family changed it to lman at the last minute.

Fashion is made to become unfashionable.

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.

Governments don’t control people like they used to.

If we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to keep getting what we’re getting.

Power does not change you, it unmasks you.

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.

Every human has four endowments – self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change.