We’re the only animal that wakes up and doesn’t stretch.

My message isn’t perfectly defined. I have, as a human being, fallen to peer pressure.

There’s nothing funnier than the human animal.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

Ultimately, I’m not doing that much. I’m only doing what a human being who feels wants to do – in my way, without stepping out of my flow, while staying in my lane. Without, I guess, boring people.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Chimps are very quick to have a sudden fight or aggressive episode, but they’re equally as good at reconciliation.

I get up at 7:30 and work four hours a day. Nine to twelve in the morning, five to six in the evening. Businessmen would achieve better results if they studied human metabolism. No one works well eight hours a day. No one ought to work more than four hours.

The flesh, or human nature, is generally lazy and self-centered.

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

You have a nice personality, but not for a human being.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

But does that mean that war and violence are inevitable? I would argue not because we have also evolved this amazingly sophisticated intellect, and we are capable of controlling our innate behavior a lot of the time.

I’m pretty calculating. I take stuff that I know appeals to people’s bad sides and match it up with stuff that appeals to their good sides.

Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.

Training and resting takes up most of my time.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings.

Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.

War had always seemed to me to be a purely human behavior. Accounts of warlike behavior date back to the very first written records of human history; it seemed to be an almost universal characteristic of human groups.

For me, training is my meditation, my yoga, hiking, biking all rolled into one. Wake up early in the morning, generally around 4 o’clock, and I’ll do my cardio on an empty stomach. Stretch, have a big breakfast, and then I’ll go train.

Boredom is… a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

You either believe that people respond to authority, or that they respond to kindness and inclusion. I’m obviously in the latter camp. I think that people respond better to reward than punishment.

The computer brings out the worst in some people.

People need motivation to do anything. I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation.

Men are nearly always willing to believe what they wish.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

What nicer thing can you do for somebody than make them breakfast?

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

I don’t have an alarm clock. If someone needs to wake me up, then I have my BlackBerry next to me.

I’ve never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be that way.

Bears are very nice, as long as you are nice to them.

When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, ‚Did you sleep good?‘ I said ‚No, I made a few mistakes.‘

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

Few are drawn to the person whom others avoid and neglect; people gather around those who have already attracted interest.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

In time we hate that which we often fear.

I just always wanted to study human behavior because every psychologist that I would talk to would tell me I was bipolar, and I know I’m not bipolar, so I had to perform a psychoanalysis on myself to find out that I have unresolved grief.

Even an animal, if you show genuine affection, gradually trust develops… If you always showing bad face and beating, how can you develop friendship?

A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.

Sometimes, getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth is the hardest part of the day – it all just hurts.

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

Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their posture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony.

I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run.

People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.

Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.

One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.

We’re hardwired for connection. There’s no arguing with the bioscience. But we can want it so badly we’re trying to hot-wire it.

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.

When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year-old girl.

There are things around, and I know where they can be got quite easily, but I quite like waking up to the sunshine.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

Some mischievous people always there. Last several thousand years, always there. In future, also.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

I don’t have maids or servants, and my husband and I love waking up early and going to the 24-hour supermarket when there is nobody else there.

Don’t think in the morning. That’s a big mistake that people make. They wake up in the morning and they start thinking. Don’t think. Just execute the plan. The plan is the alarm clock goes off, you get up, you go work out. Get some.

Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.

I wake up in the morning and my heart is light, man. It’s not heavy. I don’t have skeletons in the closet on their way out.