human nature quotes

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.

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

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.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest.

All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.

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

I am not a victim of emotional conflicts. I am human.

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.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

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

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

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.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.

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

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

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

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.

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 fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

You can’t trust very many people.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

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

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.

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human nature.

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

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

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

There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

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.

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.

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.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion.

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

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

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

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

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.

Secretly we’re all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.

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

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.

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

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.

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

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.

The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

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.

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.

That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

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