It’s not just human nature to associate in tribes. It’s deeper than that.

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.

If you’re in favour of any policy – reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever – if you’re at least minimally moral, it’s because you think it’s somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.

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

We all have to live together, so we might as well live together happily.

Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-child bonding, solidarity in the face of danger, and so on.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

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.

Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they’re better than other human beings.

Stay active. Read the Word. Worship with other believers. Continue to give. Keep learning and growing. Your faith will be unleashed!

I certainly know that I would not be able to survive if it were not for the fact that I am being upheld by the prayers of so many people.

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.

We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

My doorman is more important to me than any head of any company. He keeps us safe.

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

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

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

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

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

Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.

Self-government does not and should not imply the use of political agencies alone. Progress is born of cooperation in the community – not from governmental restraints.

I’m telling you there is hope. I have seen it, but it does not come from the governments or corporations. It comes from the people.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community.

I know why we’re strong. I know why we have held together; I know why we are united: it’s because there’s always been a growing middle class.

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

I started out in anthropology, so to me how society works, how people put themselves together and make things work, has always been a big interest.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

People react to fear, not love; they don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true.

A man’s delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.

It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.

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

No one can live without relationship. You may withdraw into the mountains, become a monk, a sannyasi, wander off into the desert by yourself, but you are related. You cannot escape from that absolute fact. You cannot exist in isolation.

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.

I think many people in my community had very different kinds of mothers: they had mothers who acquiesced in the system of male and white-supremacist domination, and my mother never did. She just could not do it. It just wasn’t in her.

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.

We’re hardwired for connection. There’s no arguing with the bioscience. But we can want it so badly we’re trying to hot-wire it.

I boldly assert, in fact I think I know, that a lot of friendships and connections absolutely depend upon a sort of shared language, or slang. Not necessarily designed to exclude others, this can establish a certain comity and, even after a long absence, re-establish it in a second.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help… Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

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

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

I like the enemy knowing there are a few guys like me around.

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

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

Our brand of democracy is hard. But I can promise that a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I’ll be right there with you as a citizen – inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far.

Death and genitals are things that frighten people, and when people are frightened, they develop means of concealment and aggression. It is common sense.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

You can see neurosis from below – as a sickness – as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.

Time was when they that feared the Lord spake often to one another; I am afraid that now they more often speak one against another.

As social animals, we are extremely susceptible to the moods of other people. This gives us the power to subtly infuse into people the appropriate mood for influencing them.

Everybody, to some extent, manipulates. Even children learn to cry when they want something. There are all kinds of subtle things we do to get others to follow our lead, not bother us, and so on.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

Let it be our delight to find our society in the circle of which Jesus is the center, and let us make those our friends who are the friends of Jesus.

But men are men; the best sometimes forget.