The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar… Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen.

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

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.

I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

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

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

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

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?

To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just.

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

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

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

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

Seemingly, man has learned to live without God, preoccupied and indifferent toward Him and concerned only about material security and pleasure.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

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.

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

When one travels around the world, one notices to what an extraordinary degree human nature is the same, whether in India or America, in Europe or Australia.

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

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.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature – opposition to it is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

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.

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

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.

Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they’re better than other human beings.

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

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.

I don’t like two stories. I like one story. I never grew up with stairs. I like to stick to what I know.

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

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven’t tried that for a while. Maybe this time it’ll work.

I have noticed… that men usually leave married women alone and are inclined to treat all wives with respect. This is no great credit to married women.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

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

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

I gave ‚em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.

The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too.

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.

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.

We should meet abuse by forbearance. Human nature is so constituted that if we take absolutely no notice of anger or abuse, the person indulging in it will soon weary of it and stop.

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

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

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.

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

Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.

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

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.

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

Repeal the Missouri Compromise – repeal all compromises – repeal the Declaration of Independence – repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man’s heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

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.

Regarding marriage, it – somehow, it didn’t happen. One fellow in such a big family not getting married is not an issue.

What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.

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.

Popular struggles to bring about a freer and more just society have been resisted by violence and repression, and massive efforts to control opinion and attitudes. Over time, however, they have met with considerable success, even though there is a long way to go, and there is often regression.

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

Man becomes his most creative during war.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.