It is a big temptation to me, when I create a character for a novel, to say that he is what he is because of faulty wiring, or because of microscopic amounts of chemicals which he ate or failed to eat on that particular day.

Some mischievous people always there. Last several thousand years, always there. In future, also.

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.

We’re the only animal that wakes up and doesn’t stretch.

In any court-like environment of power, you will inevitably find people who are drawn to those who are successful or powerful, not out of admiration, but out of secret envy.

Men and women do think differently, and frankly, we don’t understand each other. Not at all! But that’s what makes relationships so amazing.

People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.

Fear is a spirit that produces a feeling.

People need motivation to do anything. I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.

The human mind is our fundamental resource.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

I love inventing names, but I also collect unusual names, so that I can look through my notebook and choose one that suits a new character.

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical – one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.

I’m pretty calculating. I take stuff that I know appeals to people’s bad sides and match it up with stuff that appeals to their good sides.

Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.

I do not think psychoanalysis has a scientific basis. If we can’t explain why a cockroach decides to turn left, how can we explain why a human being decides to do something?

Generally speaking, if a human being never shows anger, then I think something’s wrong. He’s not right in the brain.

I think humans are just hard-wired to process people’s faces and understand meaning and expression at such a more granular level than other types of communication.

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer – and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

No one loves the man whom he fears.

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

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

I have no human feelings.

There is only one way… to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.

People respond in accordance to how you relate to them. If you approach them on the basis of violence, that’s how they’ll react. But if you say, ‚We want peace, we want stability,‘ we can then do a lot of things that will contribute towards the progress of our society.

To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.

People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.

Good psychology should include all the methodological techniques, without having loyalty to one method, one idea, or one person.

Love is a serious mental disease.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?

It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

Where the mind goes, the man follows.

Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.

Frank and explicit – that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.

My message isn’t perfectly defined. I have, as a human being, fallen to peer pressure.

In time we hate that which we often fear.

As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. We all have a dark side, a tendency to manipulate, and aggressive desires. The most dangerous types are those who repress their desires or deny the existence of them, often acting them out in the most underhanded ways.

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

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

I’m interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.

I’ve never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be that way.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

Hatred is inveterate anger.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum.

I can resist everything except temptation.

I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly, unless they have a motive to do otherwise.

You either believe that people respond to authority, or that they respond to kindness and inclusion. I’m obviously in the latter camp. I think that people respond better to reward than punishment.

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it… I can resist everything but temptation.

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

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.