Bruce Dern Quotes

I was always extremely curious about why people did the things they do.

People react to fear, not love; they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.

People are not the way they are primarily in order to annoy me.

If you know a little bit the psychology of human beings, you have to understand that if you say something you should not do, then everybody wants to do it.

It's a funny thing... but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really, what guides them is what they're afraid of. What they don't want.

There are more reasons for people's actions than the number of actions that are actually set in motion.

I am more interested in what moves people, than how they move.

People only respond to fear.

People will do more to avoid pain than they will do to gain pleasure.

People will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.

My great fear has always been complete and utter failure. Hence, you see, all the dispossessed people in my fiction, and why I try to earn as much money as I can. It's a defense. I don't enjoy it or do anything with it.

In a world we find terrifying, we ratify that which doesn't threaten us.

Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.

Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?

I think a lot of people are curious about what makes people do what they do, and I guess my curiosity isn't hidden in any way.

I'm curious about people, and I'm curious about getting to the root of where they might be coming from.

I operate off of fear almost exclusively.

People are scared of the unknown.

Because I am fascinated by people and what makes them behave the way they do. I think it is one of the most fascinating things in the world.

Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.

Although every man believes that his decisions and resolutions involve the most multifarious factors, in reality they are mere oscillation between flight and longing.

Human action is governed largely by instinct and emotion.

The important thing about human beings is not what they do, but why they do it.

Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire.

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.