Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

Some people feel affronted when something they thought to be true doesn’t happen. If that’s the case, then your sense of risk is much higher, and that leads to risk aversion. You need to be able to be comfortable in uncertainty.

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

The infinite faith I have in people’s ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior.

Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat – no matter who killed the meat for him.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

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.

Juvenile crime is not naturally born in the boy, but is largely due either to the spirit of adventure that is in him, to his own stupidity, or to his lack of discipline, according to the nature of the individual.

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

I don’t do any vulgar movements.

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

Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous.

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

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

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

Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

The ruling passion, be it what it will. The ruling passion conquers reason still.

Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music.

Why does your mind conform? Have you ever asked? Are you aware that you are conforming to a pattern? It doesn’t matter what that pattern is, whether you have established a pattern for yourself or it has been established for you.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

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.

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

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

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

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.

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.

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

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

Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.

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

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.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

If you’re put on a pedestal, you’re supposed to behave yourself like a pedestal type of person. Pedestals actually have a limited circumference. Not much room to move around.

To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.

God is the name people give to the reason we are here. But I think that reason is the laws of physics rather than someone with whom one can have a personal relationship. An impersonal God.

There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.

It is perfectly possible to live a very moral life without a belief in God, and I think it’s perfectly possible to live a life peppered with ill-doing and believe in God.

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

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

In my experience, many people confuse being cowardly with being nice.

A man’s true character comes out when he’s drunk.

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.

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

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

You just want something else that someone else has, but that doesn’t mean what you have isn’t beautiful, because people always want what you have, and you always want what they have – no one is ever 100 per cent like, ‚Yes, I’m the bomb dot com – from head to toe!‘

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

He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.

I don’t like freeloaders; I don’t like people who are negative.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

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.

The story being told in ‚Star Wars‘ is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you’re in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they’re actually not.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.