Human Nature Quotes - Page 12

The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.

So from then on, he looked at all his choices and said, What would a good person do, and then did it. But he has now learned something very important about human nature. If you spend your whole life pretending to be good, then you are indistinguishable from a good person. Relentless hypocrisy eventually becomes the truth.

Orson Scott Card

In the first place, most princes apply themselves to the arts of war, in which I have neither ability nor interest, instead of to the good arts of peace. They are generally more set on acquiring new kingdoms by hook or by crook than on governing well those that they already have.

Thomas More

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

Alexander Hamilton

To do what you imply would require nothing short of divine intervention. you must change man, not systems. Can you and our vapouring friends of the Literary Chamber of Rennes, or any other learned society of France, devise a system of government that has never yet been tried? Surely not. And can we say of any system tried that it proved other than failure in the end? My dear Philippe, the future is to be read with certainty only in the past. Ad actu ad posse valet consecutio. Man never changes. He is always greedy, always acquisitive, always vile. I am speaking of Man in the bulk.

Rafael Sabatini

Man is a logical machine run by the scoundrels of emotions.

Raheel Farooq

Having problems doesn't make you noble or virtuous, it makes you human. Nobility and virtue comes from the way that you handle your problems and either learn to move past them or live with them if out of your control.

Oli Anderson

Character of any person is the aggregate of his or her conscientious tendencies - the sum total of the knacks of the civilized part of the mind.

Abhijit Naskar

Most of these stories are on the tragic side. But the reader must not suppose that the incidents I have narrated were of common occurrence. The vast majority of these people, government servants, planters, and traders, who spent their working lives in Malaya were ordinary people ordinarily satisfied with their station in life. They did the jobs they were paid to do more or less competently,. They were as happy with their wives as are most married couples. They led humdrum lives and did very much the same things every day. Sometimes by way of a change they got a little shooting; but at a rule, after they had done their day's work, they played tennis if there were people to play with, went to the club at sundown if there was a club in the vicinity, drank in moderation, and played bridge. They had their little tiffs, their little jealousies, their little flirtations, their little celebrations. They were good, decent, normal people.I respect, and even admire, such people, but they are not the sort of people I can write stories about. I write stories about people who have some singularity of character which suggests to me that they may be capable of behaving in such a way as to give me an idea that I can make use of, or about people who by some accident or another, accident of temperament, accident of environment, have been involved in unusual contingencies. But, I repeat, they are the exception.

W Somerset Maugham

Every day we all make little MISTAKES in life, but that doesn't mean we have to pay for them for the rest of our lives.Sometimes GOOD people make BAD choices, but that doesn't mean we are BAD people...It just means we are HUMAN!

Karen Gibbs

Learn to see past the flaws and you will understand the perfection of the Universe.

Ka Chinery

The shock which the Nazi horrors produced was so great, because they came after two hundred years of Roussellian propaganda about the goodness of human nature and also because the Germans were literate, clean, technologically progressive, hard working, “modern,” sober, “orderly,” and so forth. Yet about human nature we get more concrete and more pertinent information from the Bible than from statistics dealing with secondary education, the frequency of bathtubs or the mileage of superhighways.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

All men lead their lives behind a wall of misunderstanding they have themselves built and most men die in silence and unnoticed behind the walls. Now and then a man, cut off from his fellows by the peculiarities of his nature, becomes absorbed in doing something that is personal, useful and beautiful. Word of his activities is carried over the walls.

Sherwood Anderson

Rotten people will taste rotten ice cream.

Sarah Chow

Human nature being what it was, the only time you could really be sure you weren’t being lied to was when you were talking to yourself.

Kenneth Eade

People don't want the truth,' he says, waving a hand at the streets around us. 'They want better-quality lies. High definition lies on fifty-inch screens.

Paul Murray

Nobody wants to be a part of your story. Everybody wants you to elaborate on their fantasies.

Michael Bassey Johnson

I think humans have always been desperate. I think it has always been about doing something awful if it might help, when the only other option is death. Maybe that's what being a parent is supposed to feel like.

Lauren DeStefano

... People with great passions, people who accomplish great deeds, people who possess strong feelings, even people with great minds and a strong personality, rarely come out of good little boys and girls.

Lev S. Vygotsky

Man will destroy what man fears!

Nadina Boun

In the end, the innate desire of all people for truth, justice, and human understanding must triumph over ignorance and despair.

Dalai Lama XIV

There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.

G.K. Chesterton

Indeed it is generally the case that men are readier to call rogues clever than simpletons honest, and are ashamed of being the second as they are proud of being the first.

Thucydides

For life is an expression, our unconscious actions the constant betrayal of our innermost thought. Confucius said that "man hideth not." Perhaps we reveal ourselves too much in small things because we have so little of the great to conceal.

Kakuzō Okakura

The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh. Its perceptions are still coarse and brutish. It can divine nothing clearly, nothing with certainty.

Nikos Kazantzakis

I love humanity, surprisingly, as I observe 21st century with hawk eyed vision, I realize the more I love humanity the less I love Human as an individual.

Ankita Singhal

One of the greatest inhibitions to the development of human potential is the aversion to effective practice.

Douglas B. Reeves

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

Criss Jami

One of the greatest gift you can give another human being whi is going through adversity is HOPE.

Shaka Senghor

When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but divine love cannot change.

Leo Tolstoy

The irony of the human heart is that it’s tormented both by the presence and absence of it’s own soul’s counterpart.

Crystal Woods

Yet, there is a sense of some deep sort that runs entirely contrary to human nature; that in putting ourselves first, we must by necessity put others first.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

I climb the door instead of a treeJust to crawl with myself walking freeWhat if I’m a lizard beneath my skinChanging my colours of the human I’ve been

Munia Khan

I'm not perfect and I will not be one day.But I'm a human with mistakes and I do reconcilie with my mistakes

Mohammed Sekouty

One can only describe the human but can never define it because humans are complex in their nature.

Zaman Ali

We are imperfect humans and are bound to need attitude adjustments from time to time.

Cathy Burnham Martin

Even a wolf knows how to be polite when animalistic humans have no clue about politeness

Munia Khan

What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?

S.J. Watson

I tell you that man has no more tormenting care than to find someone to whom he can hand over as quickly as possible that gift of freedom with which the miserable creature is born. But he alone can take over the freedom of men who appeases their conscience. With bread you were given an indisputable banner: give man bread and he will bow down to you, for there is nothing more indisputable than bread. But if at the same time someone else takes over his conscience - oh, then he will even throw down your bread and follow him who has seduced his conscience. In this you were right. For the mystery of man's being is not only in living, but in what one lives for. Without a firm idea of what he lives for, man will not consent to live and will sooner destroy himself than remain on earth, even if there is bread all around him. That is so, but what came of it? Instead of taking over men's freedom, you increased it still more for them! Did you forget that peace and even death are dearer to man than free choice in the knowledge of good and evil? There is nothing more seductive for man than the freedom of his conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting either. And so, instead of a firm foundation for appeasing human conscience once and for all, you chose everything that was unusual, enigmatic, and indefinite, you chose everything that was beyond men's strength, and thereby acted as if you did not love them at all - and who did this? He who came to give his life for them! Instead of taking over men's freedom, you increased it and forever burdened the kingdom of the human soul with its torments. You desired the free love of man, that he should follow you freely. seduced and captivated by you. Instead of the firm ancient law, men had henceforth to decide for himself, with a free heart, what is good and what is evil, having only your image before him as a guide - but did it not occur to you that he would eventually reject and dispute even your image and your truth if he was oppressed by so terrible a burden as freedom of choice? They will finally cry out that the truth is not in you, for it was impossible to leave them in greater confusion and torment than you did, abandoning them to so many cares and insoluble problems. Thus you yourself laid the foundation for the destruction of your own kingdom, and do not blame anyone else for it.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In the future system, you will decide how your bodies look and feel, but only til then will you have the choice.

David L. Lloyd

Before aligning the body to the future, the mind has to straighten out from the impairment or religion.

David L. Lloyd

Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own. To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them? Human nature startles with horror at the thought, and the world, in its greatest depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain as could be capable of entertaining it. But what makes this difference? When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble? When we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by whatever concerns other men; what is it which prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impulses of self-love. It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive, which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct.

Adam Smith

I said it was a brutal thing."No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a misuse of that word; they have not deserved it,

Mark Twain

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

Carl Sagan

The people naturally adhere most to doctrines which demand the least self-exertion and the least use of their own reason, and which can best accommodate their duties to their inclinations.

Immanuel Kant

The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations. . . . A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual's instinct to survive--and nowhere else!--and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts.We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race . . . .The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual.

Robert A. Heinlein

Don't be carried away by beauty, for the faeces also stays in the rectum of ravishing faces, and their private life is not beautiful as their public life...fear beauty!

Michael Bassey Johnson

People have been bred to hate for generations -- eons, maybe. Some fundamental urge. Something implicit in the human condition.

Allan Dare Pearce

A friend is like a rope, you trust it until it snaps.

Auliq-Ice

Hatred is unattractive, but it's also irresistible. If men were honest with themselves, they'd admit it's a stronger passion than lust.

Norman Lock

The answer is not relevant to the knowledge of an inquiring mind.

Even Engesland

Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity enjoy the accumulating of facts far more than the pausing at times to reflect on those facts.

Clarence Day Jr.

Such is the pure movement of nature prior to all reflection. Such is the force of natural pity, which the most depraved mores still have difficulty destroying, since everyday one sees in our theaters someone affected and weeping at the ills of some unfortunate person, and who, were he in the tyrant's place, would intensify the torments of his enemy still more; [like the bloodthirsty Sulla, so sensitive to ills he had not caused, or like Alexander of Pherae, who did not dare attend the performance of any tragedy, for fear of being seen weeping with Andromache and Priam, and yet who listened impassively to the cries of so many citizens who were killed everyday on his orders. Nature, in giving men tears, bears witness that she gave the human race the softest hearts.] Mandeville has a clear awareness that, with all their mores, men would never have been anything but monsters, if nature had not given them pity to aid their reason; but he has not seen that from this quality alone flow all the social virtues that he wants to deny in men. In fact, what are generosity, mercy, and humanity, if not pity applied to the weak, to the guilty, or to the human species in general. Benevolence and even friendship are, properly understood, the products of a constant pity fixed on a particular object; for is desiring that someone not suffer anything but desiring that he be happy?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is easier for a man to burn down his own house than to get rid of his prejudices.

Roger Bacon

In silence alone does a man's truth bind itself together and strike root.

Antoine De Saint Exupery

In a corner of my soul there hides a tiny frightened child, who is frightened by a corner where there lingers something wild.

Shaun Hick

What a piece of work is man!

William Shakespeare

Man is meant for good but designed for evil.

Raheel Farooq

The Beaver is an amphibious creature: by day it lives hidden in rivers, but at night it roams the land, feeding itself with anything that it can find. Now it understands the reason why hunters come after it with such eagerness and impetuosity, and it puts down its head and with its teeth cuts off its testicles and throws them in their path, as a prudent man who, falling into the hands of robbers, sacrifices all that he is carrying, to save his life, and forfeits his possessions by way of ransom. If however it has already saved its life by self-castration and is again pursued, then it stands up and reveals that it offers no ground for their eager pursuit, and releases the hunters from all further exertions, for they esteem its flesh less. Often however Beavers with testicles intact, after escaping as far away as possible, have drawn in the coveted part, and with great skill and ingenuity tricked their pursuers, pretending that they no longer possessed what they were keeping in concealment.

Aelian

What is a saint supposed to do, if not convert wolves?

Umberto Eco

Previous 1 … 10 11 12 13 14 … 23 Next

Human Nature Quotes - Page 12

Related Topics