Quotes About Human nature

There is a beast in man that should be exercised, not exorcised.

When man is not properly trained, he is the most savage animal on the face of the globe.

Man is and remains an animal.Here a beast of prey, there a housepet, but always an animal.

What man does not understand, he fears; and what he fears, he tends to destroy.

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.

What is Man? A miserable little pile of secrets.

There are three classes of friendship and enmity, since men are so disposed to one another either by preference or by need or by pleasure and pain.

That wild beast which lives in man and does not dare to show itself until the barriers of law and custom have been removed, was now set free.

The passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason.

When a man does not admit that he is an animal, he is less than an animal. Not more but less.

Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.

Man is a being of varied, manifold and inconstant nature. And woman, by God, is a match for him.

Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn't any. But this wrongs the jackass.

Man is an emotional animal, occasionally rational; and through his feelings he can be deceived to his heart's content.

Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: Animals have instincts, we have taxes.

The animal needing something knows how much it needs, the man does not.

The noblest of all studies is the study of what man is and of what life he should live.

One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real.

Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.

The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.

Man is an animal which, alone among the animals, refuses to be satisfied by the fulfillment of animal desires.

Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.

It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.