Quotes About Human nature

How great is the frailty of human nature which is ever prone to evil! Today you confess your sins and tomorrow you again commit the sins which you confessed. One moment you resolve to be careful, and yet after an hour you act as though you had made no resolution.

On the contrary, The Philosopher says (Ethic. ix, 8): "Love for others comes of love for oneself.

No sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of better vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men.—Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: it is even, as I said, the Shadow of Ourselves.

Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to plainest facts; and by the mere inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity, live at ease in the midst of Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is, and was always, a blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider.

We can do without any article of luxury we have never had; but when once obtained, it is not in human natur' to surrender it voluntarily.

People want to hear about the extremes of human nature. They want things that are larger than their own lives, and more romantic, and not necessarily of their own experiences.

The knowledge that we have about what it is to be human that we have as a child is something we necessarily must lose.

I don't believe that human beings are necessarily monogamous.

If human beings are fundamentally good, no government is necessary; if they are fundamentally bad, any government, being composed of human beings, would be bad also.

It's human nature that if you get 20 positive comments and one negative one, you're going to focus on the negative. We all do that. It can be something that drags you down. It's easy to get bogged down with it, but I try to concentrate on the good things.

The world is all alike. Those that seem better than their neighbours are only more artful. They mean the same thing, though they take a different road.

Man's nature is fundamentally good, or perhaps it is neither good nor evil. In any case, man is something to work on. We must hold fast to this fact - man is something to work on.

We must show there is good in society. If you read the newspapers, you think there are only crooks in this world, but that's not true.

We would all love to walk up to someone and shoot them in the head, there's no doubt about that. We're too civilised to admit it, but we're happy to read about it.

there were people who added goodness to the world and people who lived to destroy it.

Everyone judges, it's a human nature.

I'm human. That's how humans spend their time, doing shitty things.

But they were corrupt, Father! - They were human, my child. And if we were to reject all worldly authority for that reason, we would have to reject everything: marriage and government and society; the family, the state, and the church. We would have to abolish the world. Is that what you propose to do?

Los hombres ofenden antes al que aman que al que temen.

Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality, for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done will rather bring about his ruin than his preservation.

In Hobbes' memorable description, life outside society would be 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'.

I think that, in reality, there is something wrong with human beings, and unless we are willing to face the fact that something is really wrong with human beings, unless we are willing to face the fact that somewhere in our imaginations we are evil, vicious people, it is not going to work.

I do wonder sometimes, I do wonder what it is about the human mind that goes to pain and degradation. I do wonder what it is. We talk about original sin. We talk about ignorance. We talk about people not having had a chance. We talk about poverty--a bunch of things--but there is something not quite right about the human species, because, given half a chance, we'd be eating one another.

Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.