Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

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.

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

Men blaspheme what they do not know.

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.

Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.

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

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.

Men are only as great as they are kind.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

All men hate the nagging.

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world.

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.

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.

What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.

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.

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

To do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, is to be a god.

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

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

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

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

The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

The worst men often give the best advice.

The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.

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

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.

Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.

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

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

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

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.

Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

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

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that’s all. So we direct our values to material things.

True liberal government is founded on the emancipation of men.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don’t seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together.

I love playing ego and insecurity combined.

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

Men willingly believe what they wish.

Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation.

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.

Fear makes us feel our humanity.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

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

We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.

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

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

The personal ego already has a strong element of dysfunction, but the collective ego is, frequently, even more dysfunctional, to the point of absolute insanity.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.