Quotes About Human nature

The most dramatic instances of directed behavior change and "mind control" are not the consequence of exotic forms of influence, such as hypnosis, psychotropic drugs, or "brainwashing," but rather the systematic manipulation of the most mundane aspects of human nature over time in confining settings.

each of us has the potential, or mental templates, to be saint or sinner, altruistic or selfish, gentle or cruel, submissive or dominant, sane or mad, good or evil. Perhaps we are born with a full range of capacities, each of which is activated and developed depending on the social and cultural circumstances that govern our lives. I

Another way of looking at it is, you're putting good people in an evil situation to see who or what wins.

Human nature turns out to be more complicated than the idea that people will get along if only the rules are clear enough. Uncertainty, the ultimate evil that modern law seeks to eradicate, generally fosters cooperation, not the opposite.

Can you imagine how much of existence would be impossible if people didn't believe in a certain amount of luck in the face of all evidence to the contrary? The true essence of human life is delusion. That's what we've got in here. And it's been that way ever since the first Roman soldier blew on a handful of dice. It's simple human nature to believe your luck is going to turn.

One of those old-type natural fouled-up guys.

You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn't annihilate human nature.

The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong.

Our history is every human history; a black and gory business, with more scoundrels than wise men at the lead, and more louts than both put together to cheer and follow.

We can assume that most people, most of the time, are moral creatures. But imagine that this morality is like a gearshift that at times gets pushed into neutral. When that happens, morality is disengaged. If the car happens to be on an incline, car and driver move precipitously downhill. It is then the nature of the circumstances that determines outcomes, not the driver's skills or intentions.

I have been primarily interested in how and why ordinary people do unusual things, things that seem alien to their natures. Why do good people sometimes act evil? Why do smart people sometimes do dumb or irrational things?

We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations. We invest human nature with God-like qualities, with moral and rational faculties that make us both just and wise. We simplify the complexity of human experience by erecting a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil.

Any deed, for good or evil, that any human being has ever done, you and I could also do--given the same situational forces.

Instead of extinguishing in the heart of men the essential and natural love for themselves, morality should use it to show them the interest in being good, human, sociable, and trustworthy: far from wanting to destroy the passions inherent in his nature, morality will lead him to virtue, without which no man on earth can ever enjoy true happiness.

There is a little good in the worst of us and a little bad in the best of us and it ill behoves any of us to criticize the rest of us.

Les hommes sont bizarres. Ils commettent le pire sans trop se poser de questions, mais ensuite, ils ne peuvent plus vivre avec le souvenir de ce qu'ils ont fait.

Even if a psychoanalytic understanding of one's life is potentially liberating—and I think it may be—psychoanalytic therapy, by itself, cannot overcome trauma, or human nature. Nor can psychological healing take place in isolation.

Feminism is doomed to failure because it is based on an attempt to repeal and restructure human nature.

If an historian were to relate truthfully all the crimes, weaknesses and disorders of mankind, his readers would take his work for satire rather than for history.

Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness.

Any human being is this wonderful conglomeration of experiences and behaviors, if you like - some of them healthy, some of them not so healthy.

Not all great presidents were always good, and neither individuals nor nations are without evil.

Jefferson sensed that, as with lovers and intimate friends, there can often be no middle ground between engagement and estrangement. In the presence of passion, or of former passions, acquaintance is impossible. It is all or nothing, for once affections have cooled it is very difficult to bring them back to a middling temperature. In such cases human nature tends to rekindle the flames to their old force, or consign them to perpetual chill.

I think our natural disposition as humans is to plod along until we get old and stop. But with social media, we've created a stage for constant artificial high drama.