Quotes About Human nature

We are much beholden to Machiavelli and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake; but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honour, or the like. There, why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong merely out of ill nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch, because they can do no other.

Kendi deÄŸeri olmayan bir insan baÅŸkalar?n?n deÄŸerini hiçbir zaman çekemez. Çünkü insan gönlü, ya kendi üstünlüÄŸünü ya da baÅŸkalar?n?n kötülüÄŸü ile beslenmek ister.

There is in human nature generally, more of the fool than of the wise; and therefore those faculties, by which the foolish part of men's minds is taken, are most potent.

Human beings cooperate to compete, and they compete to cooperate. The birth of the Leviathan did not permanently solve the problem of violence; it simply moved it to a higher level.

Men are made unhappy not because they fail to gratify some fixed set of desires, but by the gap that continually arises between new wants and their fulfillment.

Kant picked up on Rousseau's idea of perfectibility, and turned it into the core of his moral philosophy. At the beginning of the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, he says that the only thing that is unconditionally good is a good will, and that the capacity to make moral choices is what makes us distinctively human. Human beings are ends in themselves and should never be treated as a means to other ends.

The hunter for aphorisms on human nature has to fish in muddy water, and he is even condemned to find much of his own mind.

Poate c? omul este r?u din fire È™i genele sale, cu trecerea secolelor, s-au modificat în ceva È™i mai r?u...

As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities.

There has never been a perfect government, because men have passions and if they did not have passions, there would be no need for government.

It is not to be expected that human nature will change in a day.

Then, I said to myself: 'HISTORY IS HUMAN NATURE—; TO SAY I AM GUILTY IS TO ACCEPT IMPLICATION IN THE HUMAN RACE. . .' —Now, for months and months, I have found ANOTHER MAN in me—; HE is NOT me—; I am afraid of him …

Preachers denounce sin as if it was available to everyone.

Now a work of art is a work of nature, but it is a work of human nature. It is a work of the mind: and it's a work of the mind in circumstances for an occasion which, to which, for which, and which it may be supremely natural and simple and effective. "The Nature of Art" December 19, 1954

the greatest humourists are deep down usually angry men, who know that human nature ignores tirades, but is responsive to laughter.

MORITZ: Melchior, do you agree that a human being's sense of shame is just a product of his education? MELCHIOR: It seems to me it must be deeply rooted in human nature. Imagine you had to undress completely in front of your best friend. You'd only do it if he did it at the same time.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

There are no preconditions for jealousy. You don't have to be right, you don't have to be reasonable.

We would much rather blame nature for what we don't like in ourselves than credit it for what we do like.

Those who exclaim that "animals are not people" tend to forget that, while true, it is equally true that people are animals. To minimize the complexity of animal behavior without doing the same for human behavior erects an artificial barrier.

It is said that man is wolf to man. I find this very unfair to wolves.

Ayn Rand, the Russian-American novelist and would-be philosopher, needed such boring heavy tomes full of bloodless characters to make her case. Her main point was that we are unalloyed individualists, but she had to work hard to convince us, because deep down everyone knows that this is not who or what we are. Rather than a description of our species, Rand offered a counterintuitive ideological construct.

We can't return to this preindustrial way of life. We live in societies of a mind-boggling scale and complexity that demand quite a different organization than humans ever enjoyed in their state of nature. Yet, even though we live in cities and are surrounded by cars and computers, we remain essentially the same animals with the same psychological wants and needs.