Quotes About Human nature

Law describes the way things would work if men were angels.

One would like to know, for most people, being denied reliable telepathic communication, reach for the phone, which they feel is more reliable.

The foolish race of mankind are swarming below in the night; they shriek and rage and quarrel -- and all of them are right.

Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.

Whether we like it or not, Linge's Hitler comes across as a rounded human being, and he is arguably all the more terrifying for that. Linge

We need food. We need water. We need warmth. And the lover feels he/she needs the beloved. Plato had it right over two thousand years ago. The god of love "lives in a state of need."41

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

lying is probably the most human gesture anyone can make, because humans all say one thing and do another

Every man wants a woman to appeal to his better side, his nobler instincts, and his higher nature --- and another woman to help him forget them.

To accomplish the majestically practical work, to shape the whole architecture like a statue, base nothing on impossible modifications of human nature; await nothing from pity.

There is no pool, however, which has not some dead leaves floating on its surface, no human soul upon which there do not settle habits that make it rigid against itself by making it rigid against others.

Look into any man's heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed.

Men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.

Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied.

The conscience is the innate mechanism God created in human nature to sound an inner alarm in an attempt to prevent people from taking harmful actions.

Love, I reminded my trainees, can be very selfish.

Without a defined enemy, some people wouldn't know how to get through the day. When there's no enemy, they make one. An enemy does not occur naturally. Animals may have conflict but it is survival motivated. It is Homo sapiens who seek out others and hit them until they hit back. It is as old as the first line drawn in the sand. Isn't it easier to fight than think?

Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself.

The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.

I am poor, and I am glad that i am, for i find that wealth makes more people mean than it duz generous.

Man alone can grow God-wise. He is made a little lower than the angels only, and is over all other creatures as a king. It is not his exceptional beauty, or gifts, or culture, that give him this distinction. It is his nature; and that nature is priceless and glorious in every single specimen.

I think love, both kinds of love, which you remember Plato defines in his "Symposium" - both kinds of love serve a touchstone for men. Some men understand only the one, some only the other. Those who understand only the non-platonic love need not speak of tragedy. For such love there can be no tragedy. "Thank you kindly for the pleasure, good bye," and that's the whole tragedy. And for the platonic love there can be no tragedy either, because there everything is clear and pure.

Every violent reform deserves censure, for it quite fails to remedy evil while men remain what they are, and also because wisdom needs no violence.