Quotes About Human nature

Never appeal to a man's better nature. He may not have one.

the greatest danger to man in space was man himself.

Jill, of all the nonsense that twists the world, the concept of 'altruism' is the worst. People do what they want to do, every time.

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.

Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability against all competition...The Universe will let us know-later-whether Man has any right to expand through it.

Duke, almost the only human characteristic Mike seems to possess is an overwhelming desire to be liked.

of all the nonsense that twists the world, the concept of 'altruism' is the worst. People do what they want to do, every time. If it sometimes pains them to make a choice—if the choice turns out to look like a 'noble sacrifice—

The capacity of humans to believe in what seems to me highly improbable—from table tapping to the superiority of their children—has never been plumbed.

if you are ever suspected of something, try to make the evidence point to a lesser offense. Never try to prove lily-white innocence. Human nature being what it is, your chances are better.

Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws—always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up.

human being has no natural rights of any nature.

No aspect of the human psyche can live in a healthy state unless it is balanced by its complementary opposite. If the masculine mind tries to live without its "other half," the feminine soul, then the masculine becomes unbalanced, sick, and finally monstrous. Power without love becomes brutality. Feeling without masculine strength becomes woolly sentimentality. When one side of human nature grows out of balance with the other, it becomes a tyranny in the soul.

If i can stay with my conflicting impulses long enough, the two opposing forces will teach each other something and produce an insight that serves them both. This is not a compromise but a depth of understanding that puts my life in perspective and allows me to know with certainty what I should do. That certainty is one of the most precious qualities known to human kind.

We have been told over and over that you can't change human nature, but the study of emic realities shows quite the contrary, that almost anything can become human nature if society defines it as such.

We do much better," she said, "explaining why people did things than we do at predicting what they will do.

Satyriasis?" Susan

Morgenthau begins his argument by noting that the world "is the result of forces inherent in human nature." And, human nature, as Thucydides pointed out, is motivated by fear ( phobos ), self-interest ( kerdos ), and honor ( doxa ).

Human nature - the Thucydidean pantheon of fear, self-interest, and honor - makes for a world of incessant conflict and coercion.

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.

You cannot repress anger or love, or avoid feeling them, and you should not try.

The problem is that we humans are deep conformists.

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love. —NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

According to Machiavelli, human beings naturally tend to think in terms of patterns. They like to see events conforming to their expectations by fitting into a pattern or scheme, for schemes, whatever their actual content, comfort us by suggesting that the chaos of life is predictable.

Who does ever get what they want? It doesn't seem to happen to many of us if any at all. It's always two people bumping against each other blindly, acting out of old ideas and dreams and mistaken understandings.