Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

From the boys‘ point of view, scouting puts them into fraternity-gangs, which is their natural organisation, whether for games, mischief, or loafing; it gives them a smart dress and equipments; it appeals to their imagination and romance; and it engages them in an active, open-air life.

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

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

A stiff apology is a second insult… The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

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

Everybody’s got that split between the beautiful and fragile, the hard and the dark.

When I was seven or eight years old, I began to read the science-fiction magazines that were brought by guests into my grandparents‘ boarding house in Waukegan, Illinois. Those were the years when Hugo Gernsback was publishing ‚Amazing Stories,‘ with vivid, appallingly imaginative cover paintings that fed my hungry imagination.

Imagination rules the world.

It’s human nature to gripe, but I’m going ahead and doing the best I can.

It’s human nature to blame someone else for your shortcomings or upsets.

I understand that being able to appeal to the public and having an amazing sense of humour is not something that comes easy. It’s definitely a gift and for which I’m thankful.

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

You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.

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.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

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

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

I’ve always felt that what I have going for me is not my imagination, because everyone has an imagination. What I have is a relentlessly controlled imagination. What looks like wild invention is actually quite carefully calculated.

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.

The flesh, or human nature, is generally lazy and self-centered.

I’ve got a great sense of humor, and if I’m able to say or do something in a movie that people feel like they want to repeat, that’s hugely flattering.

I feel very lucky to make a living from my imagination; I’m very grateful for that. I like that what I do is create. I’m feeling very lucky to have had the career I had. It’s gone much longer and bigger than I ever thought it would be.

I never played with anything like toys.

I never expect to see a perfect work from an imperfect man.

When BP was not moving fast enough on claims, we told BP to set aside $20 billion in a fund – managed by an independent third party – to help all those whose lives have been turned upside down by the spill.

I have trouble imagining what I could do that’s beyond the practicality of what I can do.

Desire is the essence of a man.

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

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.

Everything I’ve been thinking, every vision, even down to every shot I throw, it just ends up here in reality. Whether it was in a fight and how to react or whether it was in a stadium with screaming fans or whether I was in a fancy car or the best clothes ever, I always put myself somewhere.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

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

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.

When one travels around the world, one notices to what an extraordinary degree human nature is the same, whether in India or America, in Europe or Australia.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature – opposition to it is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

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

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

I have never believed much in luck, and my sense of humor has tended to walk on the dark side.

One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That’s how the human species has done as well as it has.

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.

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

It’s human nature to not say everything that’s on your mind at the time you think it. Because we fear saying something that people will laugh at, people will think is dumb. We’re afraid of being embarrassed.

Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.

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

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

I’ve never been able to witness the birth of an idea. It seems as if one second, there’s nothing particularly going on, and the next second, something is there. It’s coming up out of my unconscious, up from places that I don’t even know where they are.

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

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour.

Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.