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

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.

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.

Films and television and even comic books are churning out vast quantities of fictional narratives, and the public continues to swallow them up with great passion. That is because human beings need stories.

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

When one travels around the world, one notices to what an extraordinary degree human nature is the same, whether in India or America, in Europe or Australia.

Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

When anyone has the power to destroy the whole human race in a matter of hours, it becomes a moral issue. The church must speak out.

There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

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

The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave.

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

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

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

The level of destruction and terror and violence carried out by the powerful states far exceeds anything that can imaginably can be done by groups that are called terrorists and subnational groups.

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

I don’t think it is so difficult to solve the problems between Cuba and the United States; it all depends on whether there is a dialogue, a discussion, or if the prejudices and hatred of people like the extremists and terrorists from the Cuban community, who try to impose their policies, prevail.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

In whatever adulation you get, there’s truth and there’s not truth. And wherever they dog you, and they say it was horrible – there’s truth and there’s not truth. It’s human nature to like to read the adulation more.

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar… Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen.

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.

All men are equal before fish.

All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.

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

Some day science may have the existence of mankind in power, and the human race can commit suicide by blowing up the world.

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.

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

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

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

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.

We must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest.

I hate violence, yes I do. It’s kind of a dilemma, huh?.

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

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

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 is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

Secretly we’re all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.

Wars based on principle are far more destructive… the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.

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.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

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.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

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.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

Everybody’s got that split between the beautiful and fragile, the hard and the dark.

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

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

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

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

Even today we raise our hand against our brother… We have perfected our weapons, our conscience has fallen asleep, and we have sharpened our ideas to justify ourselves as if it were normal we continue to sow destruction, pain, death. Violence and war lead only to death.

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.