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

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

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.

Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

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

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people’s children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it.

I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it ‚Le Milieu Divin,‘ but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy.

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

The collective unconscious consists of the sum of the instincts and their correlates, the archetypes. Just as everybody possesses instincts, so he also possesses a stock of archetypal images.

We judge people in areas where we’re vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we’re doing.

The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.

Simplify, simplify.

I don’t argue when people say that my message is simple, but I believe Jesus‘ message was simple. Jesus didn’t go around condemning people.

For an author, the nice characters aren’t much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They’re doing it for themselves.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.

There are some loony people in this world!

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash.

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 wind can be quite extreme in England. We are not familiar with that in Germany, and you have to keep things simple.

People who think too much before they act don’t act too much.

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

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity – and I don’t mean simple – it’ll be good, and the public will know it.

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.

Faith is easy; I think people complicate it.

The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.

Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it’s true.

I don’t let my religious world get too complicated.

Men are what their mothers made them.

The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.

The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way.

If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you’re just one more deluded Pollyanna.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.

The lie is a condition of life.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.

I try to speak plainly so that my constituents who don’t follow the nuances of government like I do, because they’re too busy earning a real living, can understand the issues before me. None of this stuff is brain surgery.

No matter how hard we might wish, we will not be able to transform China’s behavior overnight.

Aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease.

I was so rude when I was a little girl.

When I was a kid, I never did funny things to get attention. I was never a funny person. I was never, like, ‚Oh, wow. I could say this some day on stage.‘

The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

Men are nearly always willing to believe what they wish.

I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul… we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.

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

Why does your mind conform? Have you ever asked? Are you aware that you are conforming to a pattern? It doesn’t matter what that pattern is, whether you have established a pattern for yourself or it has been established for you.

Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

It’s human nature to gripe, but I’m going ahead and doing the best I can.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

You just want something else that someone else has, but that doesn’t mean what you have isn’t beautiful, because people always want what you have, and you always want what they have – no one is ever 100 per cent like, ‚Yes, I’m the bomb dot com – from head to toe!‘

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

People’s minds are changed through observation and not through argument.

Woman’s at best a contradiction still.

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.

Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.

Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.