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

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.

We’re all sinners. Everybody you meet all over the world is a sinner.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

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

There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies.

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.

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.

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

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.

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

Man becomes his most creative during war.

I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul… we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.

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

To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just.

The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

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

The human race is governed by its imagination.

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

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

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.

Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that’s all. So we direct our values to material things.

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.

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

We conceal it from ourselves in vain – we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

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.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to 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.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

I think that most of us would prefer to be popular than unpopular.

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.

El Salvador is a democracy so it’s not surprising that there are many voices to be heard here. Yet in my conversations with Salvadorans… I have heard a single voice.

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

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

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

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.

There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

Power is the measure of the degree of control you have over circumstances in your life and the actions of the people around you. It is a skill that is developed by a deep understanding of human nature, of what truly motivates people, and of the manipulations necessary for advancement and protection.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

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

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

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

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.

Hell is other people.

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.

Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.