People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

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.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.

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

The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.

Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them.

Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!

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.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

If you’re in favour of any policy – reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever – if you’re at least minimally moral, it’s because you think it’s somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.

It’s just human nature to try and figure things out. So, when we’re in the midst of a situation, we usually try to reason our way through it.

I gave ‚em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.

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.

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation.

In the political system, we are a team; politics and bureaucracy, we are a team. The politicians, bureaucrats and the people, we are a team.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

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

I repeat… that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that from the people and for the people all springs, and all must exist.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

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

Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they’re better than other human beings.

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who ne’er loved them.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

Man is a universe within himself.

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.

People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment. This is our time.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

People really had a problem with my disinterest in submission. They had a problem with my intellect, and they had a problem with my choice of lovers. They had a problem with my choice of everything.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

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 fact is that people are good, Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.

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.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.