All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man’s actions.

I was never ignorant, as far as being experienced in classrooms and learning about different subjects and actually soaking it up, so I checked into college for a little bit. I took classes at a community college in West L.A. I took psychology, English, and philosophy.

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 have no human feelings.

The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.

Why does your mind conform? Have you ever asked? Are you aware that you are conforming to a pattern? It doesn’t matter what that pattern is, whether you have established a pattern for yourself or it has been established for you.

Man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.

As social animals, we are extremely susceptible to the moods of other people. This gives us the power to subtly infuse into people the appropriate mood for influencing them.

There is only one way… to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer – and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.

Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.

One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.

Everybody, to some extent, manipulates. Even children learn to cry when they want something. There are all kinds of subtle things we do to get others to follow our lead, not bother us, and so on.

Men willingly believe what they wish.

Humans have a knack for choosing precisely the things that are worst for them.

Really showing love requires more than just words.

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way – by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

A man’s delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.

Character is expressed through our behavior patterns, or natural responses to things.

Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.

Great acts are made up of small deeds.

Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.

Frank and explicit – that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

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.

To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

War had always seemed to me to be a purely human behavior. Accounts of warlike behavior date back to the very first written records of human history; it seemed to be an almost universal characteristic of human groups.

Few are drawn to the person whom others avoid and neglect; people gather around those who have already attracted interest.

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

Fear makes us feel our humanity.

Boredom is… a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.

If you will have a person enslaved, the first thing you must do is convince yourself that the person is subhuman. The second thing you have to do is convince your allies so you’ll have some help, and the third and probably unkindest cut of all is to convince that person that he or she is subhuman and deserves it.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you’re just one more deluded Pollyanna.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

The personal ego already has a strong element of dysfunction, but the collective ego is, frequently, even more dysfunctional, to the point of absolute insanity.

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.

You can see neurosis from below – as a sickness – as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.

Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.

She said the object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel.

Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.

One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.

We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

Of all that is good, sublimity is supreme. Succeeding is the coming together of all that is beautiful. Furtherance is the agreement of all that is just. Perseverance is the foundation of all actions.

No honest writer today can possibly avoid being influenced by Freud through his pioneering work into the Unconscious and by the influence of those discoveries on the scientific, philosophic, and artistic work of his contemporaries: but not, by any means, necessarily through Freud’s own writing.

I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

He does it with better grace, but I do it more natural.

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely.

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

Fear is a spirit that produces a feeling.