Quotes About Human nature

we imagine Him sadistic not because He made us that way, but because we are ourselves that way.

Of the two powers, the two categories that take possession of us when we enter the world (from where?), space is by far the less mysterious. . . . Space is, after all, solid, monolithic. . . . Time, on the other hand, is a hostile element, truly treacherous, I would even say against human nature.

Cows do not sell each other hay when they are hungry. Monkeys do not sell each other bananas. Only human beings can create the perception in other human beings that, even though they have showered, they still smell bad and need an underarm deodorant to set things right.

while many of the absolutes we cling to are social constructs (varying across cultures and over time), behind these changing constructs we also find some universal human constants.

people, with their faults and ambiguities and weaknesses, and plumbing.

Everyone loves each other, but no one really likes each other

First, I am very interested and fascinated by how everyone loves each other, but no one really likes each other. Second, the fights are always the same.

The good poem is implicitly philosophical. The not so good poem, conversely, may exquisitely describe a tree or loneliness, but if the description does not suggest an attitude toward nature, or human nature, we are left with a kind of dentist office art — devoted to decoration and the status quo.

people are not capable of being evil, they are only capable of evil; that is the crucial difference that allows repentance and forgiveness

The human capacity for guilt is such that people can always find ways to blame themselves.

Today, we commit to this next great leap into the cosmos because we're human, and our nature is to fly.

Maybe it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive.

Una limitación y un peligro aún mayores para las generaciones futuras son que todavía tenemos instintos, y en particular los impulsos agresivos, que tuvimos en los días del hombre de las cavernas.

Creo que los virus informáticos deberían ser considerados como vida. Quizás dice algo sobre la naturaleza humana que la única forma de vida que hemos sido capaces de crear hasta ahora sea puramente destructiva.

There are no shortcuts to moral insight. Nature is not intrinsically anything that can offer comfort or solace in human terms -- if only because our species is such an insignificant latecomer in a world not constructed for us. So much the better. The answers to moral dilemmas are not lying out there, waiting to be discovered. They reside, like the kingdom of God, within us -- the most difficult and inaccessible spot for any discovery or consensus.

As a species we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?

Adults are the real monsters.

People hurt the ones they love. That's how it is all around the world.

People have many ways to be lousy to one another, as you'll find out when you're older, but I think that all bad behavior stems from plain old selfishness.

The town cares for devil's work no more than it cares for God's or man's. It knew darkness. And darkness was enough.

Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.

There's precious little reform in the human race.

He had live long enough to know there was a little scumbag in everyone, but it didn't help much when you had to take out the trash.

He had lived long enough to know there was a little scumbag in everyone, but it didn't help much when you had to take out the trash.