The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

When someone bestows something on you, no matter how true it is, when someone says, ‚Sexiest Man Alive,‘ I’m honestly going, ‚Thank you. Right on.‘ For me, it’s never canceled out anything, it’s never made me go, ‚Does this make me less talented of an actor?‘

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

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

It was such a leap in my career when ‚Truman Show‘ came along. It’s always been a long process for me insofar as recognition goes, but that’s OK because you appreciate it when it comes.

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

The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.

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.

For all the supporters of Tesla over the years, and it’s been several years now and there have been some very tough times, I’d just like to say thank you very much. I deeply appreciate the support, particularly through the darkest times.

Have you not noticed that love is silence? It may be while holding the hand of another, or looking lovingly at a child, or taking in the beauty of an evening. Love has no past or future, and so it is with this extraordinary state of silence.

The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.

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

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

I’m grateful for always this moment, the now, no matter what form it takes.

All men are equal before fish.

Fear is the mother of morality.

My speculation is that the U.S. does not want to establish the principle that it has to defer to some higher authority before carrying out the use of violence.

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

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.

Life is abundant, and life is beautiful. And it’s a good place that we’re all in, you know, on this earth, if we take care of it.

This is a moment that I deeply wish my parents could have lived to share. My father would have enjoyed what you have so generously said of me-and my mother would have believed it.

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.

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

You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.

What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

Pick the day. Enjoy it – to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come… The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present – and I don’t want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.

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.

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?

There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don’t really think most people really understand what they’ve seen.

I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness… and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

The ideas associated with the problems of the development of science, as far as I can see by looking around me, are not of the kind that everyone appreciates.

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it.

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

It definitely has learning a lesson about the way you’re living your life. I wouldn’t compare our movie to that, but it has a structure where it’s about a man who doesn’t appreciate all that he has and finds out at the end that life has been great and he has to enjoy that.

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.

I want to thank my Eritrean fans for feeling connected to me and for supporting me. I feel extremely grateful.

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

Pay attention, don’t let life go by you. Fall in love with the back of your cereal box.

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

The craving for information is so huge now, and it can be marketed at such a rapid rate.

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 healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.

Friends applaud, the comedy is over.

I love to sit and eat quietly and enjoy each bite, aware of the presence of my community, aware of all the hard and loving work that has gone into my food.

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.

Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

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

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

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.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

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

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man’s virtues the means of deceiving him.