Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

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.

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That’s the way the mind of man operates.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

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

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

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

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

Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane… There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions.

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.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

I see clearly that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

Man is a universe within himself.

Never be the only one, except, possibly, in your own home.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

Everybody likes a compliment.

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

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.

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.

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

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

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

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

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

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

It’s human nature to not say everything that’s on your mind at the time you think it. Because we fear saying something that people will laugh at, people will think is dumb. We’re afraid of being embarrassed.

Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood.

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

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

I’ve learned people are watching, so don’t do nothing stupid.

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

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.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

If you can’t move and talk to people that you see, it’s not really my scene.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

Fear is the mother of morality.

She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

I can analyze people’s intentions. Immediately. That’s just a warning. To everyone.

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

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

Man’s nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.

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

When I take my kid to school, all the parents stop and stare.

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

My mother always told me it wasn’t polite to ask what people make.

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

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.

People expect your behavior to conform to known patterns and conventions. Your task as a strategist is to upset their expectations.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Strength and compassion are not mutually exclusive.