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

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.

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.

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.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?

I hate the rock music tradition. I can’t bear it!

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.

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

We humans are self-absorbed by nature, and spend most of our time focusing inwardly on our emotions, on our wounds, on our fantasies.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

Hatred is self-punishment.

Shall I, that have destroyed my Preservers, return home?

To destroy is always the first step in any creation.

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

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

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.

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.

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

The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction.

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.

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

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

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

By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.

Israel is following policies which maximise its security threats… policies which choose expansion over security… policies which lead to their moral degradation, their isolation, their delegitimation, as they call it now, and very likely ultimate destruction. That’s not impossible.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

I don’t use blue. I don’t like it. It bugs me out. I hate it.

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

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

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

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.

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

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

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

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.

There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.

All men are equal before fish.

To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman?

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

If you look back at the history of the twentieth century, Germany alone had practically destroyed Russia several times.

Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

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.

Fear is the mother of morality.

Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.

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.

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

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