Quotes About Human nature

foresight of our own dissolution is so terrible to us, and that the idea of those circumstances, which undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead, makes us miserable while we are alive. And from thence arises one of the most important principles in human nature, the dread of death, the great poison to the happiness, but the great restraint upon the injustice of mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards and protects the society.

qué otro sistema político puede ser más ruinoso y destructivo que los vicios de los hombres?

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.

After all that has been said of the levity and inconstancy of human nature, it appears evidently from experience, that man is, of all sorts of luggage, the most difficult to be transported.

but the beast was man, had always been man.

As J. G. Ballard pointed out, civilization is just a thin, fragile veneer over the law of the jungle: Better you than me. Better your kid than my kid.

There were no monsters on Dutch Island, but the beast was man, had always been man.

Every person, according to an ancient legend, is born into the world with two bags suspended from their neck: all bags in front full of their neighbors' faults, and a large bag behind filled with his own faults. Hence it is that people are quick to see the faults of others, and yet are often blind to their own failings.

We could not be fulfilled if we weren't inauthentic some of the time—inauthentic, that is, in relation to such things as our passing desires to throttle our children, poison our spouse, or end our marriage over a dispute about changing a lightbulb.

It follows that the more people we take to be our equals and compare ourselves to, the more people there will be to envy.

If we were entirely sane, if madness did not have a serious grip on one side of us, other people's tragedies would hold a great deal less interest for us.

Despite our best efforts to clean it of its peculiarities, sex will never be either simple or nice in the ways we might like it to be.

The longing for company may be no less powerful or irresponsible in its effects than the sexual motive once was.

We could not be fulfilled if we weren't inauthentic some of the time, perhaps even a lot of it – inauthentic, that is, in relation to such things as our passing desires to throttle our children, poison our spouse or end our marriage over a dispute about changing a light bulb.

there can be a savage edge.

Though we are often taught to think of ourselves as inherently selfish, the longing to act meaningfully in our work seems just as stubborn a part of our make-up as our appetite for status or money. It is because we are meaning-focused animals..

On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love'

Tragedies remind us how badly we need to keep controlling ourselves by showing us what happens when people don

But the world doesn't run on logic, it runs on the seven deadly sins and the weather. - Alan Furst; Red Gold

And you wanted to escape,' a man near me whispered to another man. 'You wanted to run off into the woods and fight. But do you see? Do you see what the rest of them think about us? These people would sell you back to the Nazis for a sack of potatoes and then toast you at their dinner table.

it was disbelief in the universality of moral truth, and the failure to see that human beings are by nature capable of gaining access to moral truth, that created the intellectual perversions of pragmatism and positivism alike.

It is tempting to say, as my friend suggested, that these online identities are caricatures of the real me. It is certainly true that social media can unleash the cruellest side of human nature.

Our tendency to think that we're not predictable is probably one of our more predictable traits.

I viewed my fellow man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape.