Quotes About Human nature

Leo Tolstoy observes, "Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself.

I close my eyes. "I keep coming back to this one thought: that I know everything about monsters and nothing about people.

The Magistrate says, "I am a student of human nature, did you know that, Mr. Pitts?" "It beats beekeeping, I guess." He smiles infinitesimally.

There is something mean in human nature that prefers to think evil, that gives a willing ear and a ready welcome to calumny, a sort of jealousy of goodness and greatness and things of good report.

it is only human nature to wonder and second guess about choices made and paths not taken.

There are some things he doesn't want to know about himself, and others he doesn't want anybody else to know. Which makes him like the rest of us. ... There are moments in the lives of others that excite both our disgust and our shame, the fear of what we ourselves might do. ... I venture to say that everyone on this jury, and everyone in this room, has done things that they're ashamed of, and told lies that they regret.

We're all moons. Sometimes our dark sides overshadow our light.

Human beings need to be made happier, but they do not need to be redeemed, for they are not degraded beings, not immaterial souls imprisoned in material bodies, not innocent souls corrupted by original sin.

Oh we're a mess, poor humans, poor flesh—hybrids of angels and animals, dolls with diamonds stuffed inside them. We've been to the moon and we're still fighting over Jerusalem.

we all need reassurance and encouragement. We're human, and that's how we work

The economics training the students receive provides enormous insights into the behavior of Econs, but at the expense of losing common-sense intuition about human nature and social interactions. Graduates no longer realize that they live in a world populated by Humans.

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 moral contradictions of our ancestry should not prevent us from reaching a realistic assessment of who we are. Whehn we do that, high hopes are still possible.

It is a folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.

They're walking around in clothing but they're still the same animals who lived in caves, feared the dark, and smashed one another over the head for beans.

Humans are fundamentally irrational. They use what precious rationality they have justifying their irrational behavior. A

Why?" Mrs. Hogendobber might preach about evil, but when confronted with it she was at a loss. She expected the Devil with green horns or a human being with a snarling face. It had never once occurred to her in her long and relatively happy life that evil is ordinary.

I don't see why human people make such a heavy trip out of sex. It isn't anything complex, it is simply the best thing in life, even better than food.

Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.

The commonest weakness of our race is our ability to rationalize our most selfish purposes.

Correct morality can only be derived from what man is — not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be.

one of the few things I've learned is that humans hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn—when they do, which isn't often—on their own, the hard way.

I was there to see beautiful naked women. So was everybody else. It's a common failing.

The capacity of a human mind to believe devoutly in what seems to me to be the highly improbable - from table tapping to the superiority of their own children - has never been plumbed. Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don't argue with it --- especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken. Negative proof is usually impossible.