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

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

No sane man will dance.

I do a little thing about the way people shake the sweetener packet. You know, like they’re all excited. I want to get all the granules down to one end. I love all these rituals.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

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

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

The moral disapprobation of society has an impact on behavior in societies.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

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

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

Society has always to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

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

If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.

Silence speaks so much louder than screaming tantrums. Never give anyone an excuse to say that you’re crazy.

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

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.

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.

The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.

No matter how hard we might wish, we will not be able to transform China’s behavior overnight.

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

Virtue is a habit of the mind, consistent with nature and moderation and reason.

I deeply regret any harm, or any perceived harm, that I may have done to anyone by any behaviour of mine.

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

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

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

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

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

Ritual is another word for fear, manifested in a different way.

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.

There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.

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.

Humor is reason gone mad.

As pessimistic as I am about the nature of human beings and our capacity for atrocity and malevolence and betrayal and laziness and inertia, and all those things, I think we can transcend all that and set things straight.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.

I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you.

I’m very much a creature of habit.

The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.

The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction.

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

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.

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.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

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.

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

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

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

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.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

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