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

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.

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

If we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to keep getting what we’re getting.

People’s minds are changed through observation and not through argument.

Someday, the capitalist system will disappear in the United States, because no social class system has been eternal. One day, class societies will disappear.

I don’t like celebrity programmes – but I do like programmes about how ideas are formed and evolve.

In a progressive country change is constant; change is inevitable.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

We have to do more than just elect a new President if we truly want to change this country.

Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.

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.

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.

The game is changing with songs like ‚Earned It‘ as opposed to it changing me.

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.

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.

For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.

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.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it’s a very poor scheme for survival.

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

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.

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.

Governments don’t control people like they used to.

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.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent.

Books are sharks… because sharks have been around for a very long time. There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark.

Humans have certain properties and characteristics which are intrinsic to them, just as every other organism does. That’s human nature.

Nature is not human hearted.

Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.

The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love – first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

Change alone is unchanging.

Eventually, all companies are replaced.

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

All men are equal before fish.

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.

The world has entered an era of the most profound and challenging change in human history.

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

Last year we said, ‚Things can’t go on like this‘, and they didn’t, they got worse.

Some people would claim that things like love, joy and beauty belong to a different category from science and can’t be described in scientific terms, but I think they can now be explained by the theory of evolution.

Man is a universe within himself.

The earth’s crust has not yet stopped heaving and plunging under our feet. Mountain ranges are still being thrust up on the horizon. Granites are still growing under the continental masses. Nor has the organic world ceased to produce new buds at the tips of its countless branches.

I feel confident imposing change on myself. It’s a lot more fun progressing than looking back. That’s why I need to throw curve balls.

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

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

Hell is other people.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

Don’t bother about being modern. Unfortunately it is the one thing that, whatever you do, you cannot avoid.

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.