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

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

My lawyer has been a good friend of mine for a long time. He and I continuously have conversations.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

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

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

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.

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

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’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

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

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.

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

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.

I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

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.

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

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.

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.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

I do not like the human race. I don’t like their heads, I don’t like their faces, I don’t like their feet, I don’t like their conversations, I don’t like their hairdos, I don’t like their automobiles.

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

The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has a romance of its own.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

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 becomes his most creative during war.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

Nature is not human hearted.

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

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

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

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

We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.

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

Man is a universe within himself.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

Fear is the mother of morality.

I realize that many elements of the Buddhist teaching can be found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam. I think if Buddhism can help, it is the concrete methods of practice.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

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

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.

The fact is that people are good, Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.

I like actors very much, but to marry one would be like marrying your brother. You look too much alike in the mirror.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

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

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

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest.

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

The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust.

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.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

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

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

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