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

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

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

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!

The difference between humans and other mammals is that we know how to accessorize.

It’s not just human nature to associate in tribes. It’s deeper than that.

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

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

Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

Is evolution a theory, a system, or an hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true.

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.

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.

Selling an electric sports car creates an opportunity to fundamentally change the way America drives.

If you’re going to wake up early all the time, and you’re working hard, and you’re working out, sometimes you’re going to get tired. It’s OK. It’s acceptable – somewhat. We’re all human, unfortunately.

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.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

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.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

Of course humans like to explore, and we should. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s more than that. It’s essential for your children and your children’s children.

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour’s buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

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.

I don’t want to just revolve. I want to evolve. As a man, as a human, as a father, as a lover.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

Regarded zoologically, man is today an almost isolated figure in nature. In his cradle, he was less isolated.

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

From an evolutionary standpoint, human consciousness has not been around very long. A little light just went on after four and a half billion years. How often does that happen? Maybe it is quite rare.

Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

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 think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

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.

I do not look upon these United States as a finished product. We are still in the making.

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

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

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.

Our lifelong certainties about the world can be demolished in a single second.

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man’s virtues the means of deceiving him.

Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

Beauty is also submitted to the taste of time, so a beautiful woman from the Belle Epoch is not exactly the perfect beauty of today, so beauty is something that changes with time.

I’ve learned that we all change constantly. It’s rare to find that person who is growing with you in the same way at the same time, who encourages you to grow.

Certainly the first true humans were unique by virtue of their large brains. It was because the human brain is so large when compared with that of a chimpanzee that paleontologists for years hunted for a half-ape, half-human skeleton that would provide a fossil link between the human and the ape.

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

I don’t think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

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.

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

I don’t care whether you’re driving a hybrid or an SUV. If you’re headed for a cliff, you have to change direction. That’s what the American people called for in November, and that’s what we intend to deliver.

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

You can live within the institutions and work hard to change them.

A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets.

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