People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.

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

Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

I think people inspire me the most. If I meet a person who is incredibly complex, and all of a sudden, I start thinking in rhymes, that person could be a muse.

We conceal it from ourselves in vain – we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

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.

Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

People in tough times – it doesn’t mean they don’t have a great attitude.

To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.

When you come to my show, I want it to feel like opera, like a theatre.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

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

I’m a people’s man – only the people matter.

People from North India are generally known to be aggressive and emotional.

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

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

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

We humans are self-absorbed by nature, and spend most of our time focusing inwardly on our emotions, on our wounds, on our fantasies.

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

I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside.

Power has only one duty – to secure the social welfare of the People.

People who can’t be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

To be is to do.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

People really had a problem with my disinterest in submission. They had a problem with my intellect, and they had a problem with my choice of lovers. They had a problem with my choice of everything.

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

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

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

Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.

Some artists are working to buy the mansion or whatever the element of fame must bear, but I spend all my money on my show.

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

But men are men; the best sometimes forget.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

The fact is that people are good, Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.

Human nature is not totally fixed, but on any realistic scale, evolutionary processes are much too slow to affect it.

All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

Secretly we’re all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.

Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.

There have been many great men that have flattered the people who ne’er loved them.

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.

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

It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.

Every generation always thinks it was better before, and I think people have been saying this for probably thousands of years.

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

I like some animals more than some people, some people more than some animals.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human nature.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.