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

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 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.

What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Fear is the mother of morality.

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.

Judas betrayed Jesus. Lady Red betrayed John Dillinger. Those things happen.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

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.

Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can – that is their secret.

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.

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

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

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

God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them.

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.

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

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.

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.

There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.

Desire is the essence of a man.

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

The lie is a condition of life.

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.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

We should meet abuse by forbearance. Human nature is so constituted that if we take absolutely no notice of anger or abuse, the person indulging in it will soon weary of it and stop.

The way I try to represent my family and coaches, I think all are characteristics the league aspires to portray. That’s just who I am.

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

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

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

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

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

Some animals are cunning and evil-disposed, as the fox; others, as the dog, are fierce, friendly, and fawning. Some are gentle and easily tamed, as the elephant; some are susceptible of shame, and watchful, as the goose. Some are jealous and fond of ornament, as the peacock.

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

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.

The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.

Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

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.

If any organism fails to fulfill its potentialities, it becomes sick.

Hell is other people.

Repeal the Missouri Compromise – repeal all compromises – repeal the Declaration of Independence – repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man’s heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

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

O‘ What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

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.

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

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

Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.

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.

Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

To do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, is to be a god.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

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.