To insult someone we call him ‚bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, ‚human‘ might be the greater insult.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.

I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.

Our necessities never equal our wants.

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.

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

He is lost who is possessed by carnal desire.

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.

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

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

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

When someone is impatient and says, ‚I haven’t got all day,‘ I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

The human race is governed by its imagination.

All men are equal before fish.

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.

We have lived long enough to experience the hollowness of earth and the rottenness of all carnal promises.

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

Hell is other people.

We’re all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.

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.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

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’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.

Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.

In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.

I don’t want to be too critical of what other people do, but when people go back to do the same thing that they did, I’m completely confused. I’m like, ‚Didn’t you make that movie already?‘ I’ve been very fortunate, and I’m well taken care of, so the least I can do is try to go forward.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

A stiff apology is a second insult… The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.

The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

I remember when I first came to Washington. For the first six months you wonder how the hell you ever got here. For the next six months you wonder how the hell the rest of them ever got here.

O‘ What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

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.

I’m reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

Every President I think I’ve ever known, except Truman, has thought they didn’t quite get done what they wanted done. And toward the end of their Administrations, they were disappointed and wished they had done some things differently.

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

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

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.

Desire is the very essence of man.

That’s the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God – so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true… Hell, don’t pose me that one.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

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.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

When I look back on what I did for the Left, I’m in a small way quite proud of some of it – I only wish I’d done more.

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