Human Nature Quotes

Pessimism is a funny thing, isn't it? Madison thought as she looked at Judith's furrowed face. I like a bit of pessimism as much as the next man, but when I'm bombarded with it I suddenly became an eternal optimist.

Any similarity between existing people and certain characters in this book is due solely to insight into human nature.

Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.

While it is absurd to blame Marx for something he did not foresee and certainly would have condemned if he had foreseen it, the distanced between Marx's predicted communist society and the form taken by 'communism' in the twentieth century may in the end be traceable to Marx's misconception of the flexibility of human nature.

When you discard arrogance, complexity, and a few other things that get in the way, sooner or later you will discover that simple, childlike, and mysterious secret known to those of the uncared block: life is fun.

We are all the products of nature composed with essential elements. Every natural force has an opposite. The components of earth, wind, water, and fire comprise nature. Similar to nature, we contain complementary, contradictory, and counterpoising elements.

Nature programmed the neurobiological processes of early love to appear as something beyond the primitive sexual cravings of the genitals. So, from an evolutionary standpoint, it all leads to copulation and reproduction, but from the perspective of the individual who has recently fallen head over heels in love with someone, it is mostly about a sensation of warmth and delight, and rarely of sexual nature.

There are springs in the mind from which others cannot drink.

What was the purpose, then, of everything they taught in here? If it couldn't prevent men from acting like monsters?

Everyone must look out for himself, and the best time is had by those who're best able to decieve themselves.

...you’d be amazed at the grand tales the human brain will throw up to make sense of something nonsensical.

Oh, it must be wonderful to be educated. What does it feel like?''It's like having an operation,' said Treece. 'You don't know you've had it until long after it's over.

Not all poisonous juices are burning or bitter nor is everything which is burning and bitter poisonous.

It seems to be a law of human nature that those who live by the sea are suspiciousof swimmers, just as those who live in the mountains are suspicious of mountainclimbers.

The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.

Anything that can be controlled is Action not emotion!

People Always Confuse Between To become What..? or To Become Whose...?

The ongoing struggle to achieve a profound harmony between the deepest and most conflicting impulses of human beings instates the murkiness of my soul. The battle against the amorphousness of sin and depravity, and seeking unity and clarity, trace their origins to the primeval fire that launched humanity. This ancient warfare for control of the soul allows me to create myself. Because of the primordial inconsistences between ecstasy and reason, I am the repentant artist of my being. I am a beardless, sensuous, and androgynous sculptor, the redeemer and the transformer of my naked self.

What is life but God's daring invitation to a remarkable journey? And what is human nature but a staunchly inbred tendency toward self-preservation? And because of the rigidly paradoxical nature of these things, the road of life is seldom trod beyond a few scant steps.

You’re either good, or you’re clever.

The rest were nondescript, as yet undifferentiated—yet nondescripts, thought Harriet, were the most difficult of all human beings to analyze. You scarcely knew they were there, until—bang! Something quite unexpected blew up like a depth charge and left you marveling, to collect strange floating debris.

I am a puzzle and a conundrum and a thunderstorm.

We cry for the hand of God to bring us salvation, but then we seize the voice of God and use it to profess our destructive nature.

Nature to all things fixed the limits fitAnd wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.As on the land while here the ocean gains.In other parts it leaves wide sandy plainsThus in the soul while memory prevails,The solid power of understanding failsWhere beams of warm imagination play,The memory's soft figures melt awayOne science only will one genius fit,So vast is art, so narrow human witNot only bounded to peculiar arts,But oft in those confined to single partsLike kings, we lose the conquests gained before,By vain ambition still to make them moreEach might his several province well command,Would all but stoop to what they understand.

Those who understand the complexities of human nature know that joy and pain, ugliness and beauty, love and hate, mercy and cruelty and other conflicting emotions often blend and cannot be separated from each other.

I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.

Keep this in mind: it is our religion to praise life. The word "life” is the king of words. The king­word surrounded by other grand words. The word "adventure”! The word "future”! And the word "hope”! By the way, do you know the code name for the atomic bomb they dropped on Hiroshima? "Little Boy”! That's a genius, the fellow who invented that code! They couldn't have dreamed up a better one. Little boy, kid, tyke, tot - there's no word that's more tender, more touching, more loaded with future.

Nobody sane loves working in an office, It’s against human nature to be locked up in a cubicle all day long.

It often occurs that pride and selfishness are muddled with strength and independence. They are neither equal nor similar; in fact, they are polar opposites. A coward may be so cowardly that he masks his weakness with some false personification of power. He is afraid to love and to be loved because love tends to strip bare all emotional barricades. Without love, strength and independence are prone to losing every bit of their worth; they become nothing more than a fearful, intimidated, empty tent lost somewhere in the desert of self.

In the long run one gets used to anything.

In searching for myself, I have created myself.

As hard as we strive, man remains a perfect imperfect being.

Nature is infinitely rich and diverse in her ways. She can be seen to break her most unchanging laws. She has made self-interest the motive of all human action, but in the great host of men she produces ones who are strangely constituted, in whom selfishness is scarcely perceptible because they do not place their affections in themselves. Some are passionate about the sciences, others about the public good. They are as attached to the discoveries of others as if they themselves had made them, or to the institutions of public welfare and the state as if they derived benefit from them. This habit of not thinking of themselves influences the whole course of their lives. They don't know how to use other men for their profit. Fortune offers them opportunities which they do not think of taking up.In nearly all men the self is almost never inactive. You will detect their self-interest in nearly all the advice they give you, in the services they do for you, in the contacts they make, in the friendships they form. They are deeply attached to the things which affect their interests however remotely, and are indifferent to all others. When they encounter a man who is indifferent to personal interest they cannot understand him. They suspect him of hidden motives, of affectation, or of insanity. They cast him from their bosom, revile him.

By nature, that mind is easily fooled by supernatural mysticism. It is extremely gullible. And no matter how much we the civilized human beings advance in the fields of modern sciences, there is always a part of us, that tries to allure us with magical nonsense, because that nonsense has been with us since the birth of humanity.

I suspect each of us uses the past to prop up the bruised present. It’s a clumsy try for the comfort of normality.

The less human you feel, the more human you become.

Humanism is not a single character. It is a magnificent blend of various emotional and behavioral traits that are unique to the human mind.

Progress means advancement in the path of upliftment – in the path of enlightenment – in the path of humanitarian glory.

Since humans are social animals, you’re basically only as good as your reputation.

Human nature is the same in all professions.

Feminism as a movement for political and social equity is important, but feminism as an academic clique committed to eccentric doctrines about human nature is not. Eliminating discrimination against women is important, but believing that women and men are born with indistinguishable minds is not. Freedom of choice is important, but ensuring that women make up exactly 50 percent of all professions is not. And eliminating sexual assaults is important, but advancing the theory that rapists are doing their part in a vast male conspiracy is not.

Males of all species are made for wooing females, and females typically choose among their suitors. If you take a closer look, you can observe such behavior all around you. The beautiful bird chirping outside your window. It’s a mating call. That pretty little bird is trying to attract a potential mate, so that it can propagate its genes. Why does the peacock have such beautiful feathers? It is to attract a healthy female. He as well is trying to propagate his genes. Even we humans, are not much different from the rest of the animal kingdom when it comes to attracting potential mates. When women dress up for their night out at the club, they are doing so to look attractive. This is a subconscious evolutionary desire to attract as many potential mates as possible.... While women tend to grab attention with their looks, men on the other hand, tend to attract as many potential females as possible, by showing off their resources. When a man shows off with his fancy car, expensive gold watch and suit, or flexes his muscles and brags about how many credit cards he owns, he’s doing so to make himself desirable by healthy women, in order to propagate his genes. It is all in the pursuit of reproduction.

Show a human a closed door, and no matter how many open doors she finds, she'll be haunted by what might be behind it.

The way I see it, the impossible happens all the time; but we're so good at taking it for granted, we forget it was once impossible.

Human nature defeats me sometimes, how greed and spite can lurk so divisively around the utmost courage and sacrifice.

Our imperfection is the perfect experience of being human.

I'm the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox. But that's fine with me. I don't mind at all. Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match.

Life is like butter - when things cool down it can be reshaped

Adapting to changes represents an important characteristic of human nature, essential for the development of human society.

We are all flawed and creatures of our times. Is it fair to judge us by the unknown standards of the future?

People grow, but they don't change.

As humans, it is in our nature to focus on picking ourselves up while the whole world falls apart.

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

All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness of their fact, they call purchase, as a name more honest. Howsoever, he that for want of will or wit useth not those means, must rest in servitude and poverty.

I know human nature. We might sacrifice a few, because we are stupid and hardwired for group survival. But we would never die in the thousands because a god wished it. Those kinds of numbers require material gains, like power, wealth, territory.

The eye of danger and the face of fear are what really pull off a person's mask.

Monsters, show me the monsters: these people out on the street. My people.

If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.

They are the humans who are intelligent enough to have insight of every single molecular underpinning of the warmth of love, and yet not let that factual knowledge ruin the romance in a relationship.

How many times have I told you never listen to a person's words; watch their actions to see what is in their heart. A person can say many things they do not mean." Charlie to Beth