Quotes About Human nature

Human nature simply cannot subsist without a hope and aim of some kind; as the sanity of the Old Testament truly said, where there is no vision the people perisheth. But it is precisely because an ideal is necessary to man that the man without ideals is in permanent danger of fanaticism.

For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.

Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine. He might, after all, be a sort of animal, namely, a higher mammal. There has yet to be ventured the hazardous leap to the hypothesis that perhaps he is a man.

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.

We need to understand that the suffering people cause themselves and others comes from this primitive aspect of human nature and isn't a reflection of their true nature or value as a human being. The only thing that allows us to hurt or go to war with others is the belief that they are evil rather than that they, like us, are driven by a primitive aspect of themselves that perpetrates evil.

a raiva é um dado estrutural. De acordo com os períodos, ela diminui ou aumenta, mas nunca desaparece. É uma das correntes de fundo que regem a sociedade. A questão não é portanto tentar combatê-la, mas somente geri-la:

We're the worst thing because for us the worst thing is the best thing. And it's only the best thing for us if it's the worst thing for someone else.

The beast is redundant. It's been us all along.

And so this government of the United States was brilliantly designed to keep that weakness of human nature in check, but it required the people to participate daily, to be vigilant, and they have not. It demanded that they behave as though their government was their servant, but they have not. In their silence the people of the United States have spoken. While they slept the servant has become their master.

The ability to eavesdrop on people's communications vests immense power in those who do it. And unless such power is held in check by rigorous oversight and accountability, it is almost certain to be abused. Expecting the US government to operate a massive surveillance machine in complete secrecy without falling prey to its temptations runs counter to every historical example and all available evidence about human nature.

Expecting the US government to operate a massive surveillance machine in complete secrecy without falling prey to its temptations runs counter to every historical example and all available evidence about human nature.

I've learned enough about human nature to know that behind anger or bitterness or hurt there's always a wound, or fear, or frustration.

The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing but ill will and envy.

No man learns to know his inmost nature by introspection, for he rates himself sometimes too low, and often too high, by his own measurement. Man knows himself only by comparing himself with other men; it is life that touches his genuine worth.

Friend, we are all human, and the bit of sense any one of us might have is of little or no use when the passions rage and by the constraints of being human we are put under duress." [...] And we parted, not having understood one other. But then here on earth no one ever easily understands anyone else.

Man is always more than he can know of himself consequently, his accomplishments, time and again, will come as a surprise to him.

Malice lies dormant in all of us and anyone who knows how to exploit it, how to turn it sharply in one direction can hope for an echo.

We human beings are paradoxes. We love the fruits of commitment, love, and order. Yet a dark side of us is often anticommitment, antilove, and antiorder. We would prefer to receive these things; we have to be taught and we have to deliberately choose to give these things. This is a fundamental testimony to the evil within.

Happiness often makes us rather cruel.

Although he trusted the good sense of the people in the long run, he believed that they could easily be misled by demagogues. He was a realist who had no illusions about human nature. "The motives which predominate most human affairs," he said, "are self-love and self-interest." The common people, like the common soldiers in his army, could not be expected to be "influenced by any other principles than those of interest.

But probably 2,000 years hence many beliefs of the wise of our day will have come to seem equally foolish. Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in man.

"We want in so many different ways to be," he began again. "This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man he will never on his heap of mud keep still. He want to be so, and again he want to be so…" He moved his hand up, then down… "He wants to be a saint, and he wants to be a devil..."

We are creatures trapped in culture.