Isambard K. Brunel Quotes

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can ever be made.

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

If someone has reached a certain level, it is always expected that he becomes better and better, but there are also phases in which it does not run so smoothly - and that's human.

We're not robots. There isn't a perfect formula for an interview and there are days when you bring too much of you and there are days, quite honestly, when you don't bring enough of you.

I'm a big supporter of safety.

We're only human beings and cannot always be in control of our lives.

You can't control injuries, can't control guys getting fired and stuff like that.

I'm only a human being. I'm not a robot.

Aus so krummen Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden. Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made.

You must never believe that the enemy does not know how to conduct his own affairs. Indeed, if you want to be deceived less and want to bear less danger, the more the enemy is weak or the less the enemy is cautious, so much more must you esteem him.

Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance. To me, it always seemed that the solution had to be wisdom. You did not refuse to look at danger, rather you learned how to handle it safely.

Sometimes people surprise us. People we believe we know.

We wait until Pandora's box is opened before we say, "Wow, maybe we should understand what's in that box." This is the story of humans on every problem.

The great majority of men are but tangled skeins, imperfect keyboards, so many specimens of restless or stagnant chaos--and what makes their situation almost hopeless is the fact that they take pleasure in it. There is no curing a sick man who believes himself in health.

Flawed, imperfect creatures! That's what we both are, oga! That's what we ALL are!

Love is a very contradiction of all the elements of our ordinary nature -- it makes the proud man meek -- the cheerful, sad -- the high-spirited, tame; our strongest resolutions, our hardiest energy fail before it. Believe me, you cannot prophesy of its future effect in a man from any knowledge of his past character.

Perfection is only an ideal for man; it cannot be attained, for man is made imperfect.

To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species.

I think people are screw-ups, and even our greatest heroes are deeply flawed human beings. People make bad decisions for all the wrong reasons, and then somehow they'll do the right thing, and then somehow they'll save somebody, or they'll be compassionate. Horrible people can do wonderful things, and wonderful people can do horrible things.

Carry an oar when you drive. Three times I've ended up in water.

I believe in diversification of income, because you never know what will happen. I'm a slightly paranoid person who thinks things could be ruined at any time.

My pessimism (which, by the way, is far from absolute) originated with my despair in the lack of perfection to be found in human nature. I was attempting in my successive books to show the inevitable handicap of the human condition.

I believe that history is capable of anything. There exists no folly that men have not tried out.

humans are born in truth, but we grow up believing in lies. one of the biggest lies in the story of humanity is the lie of our imperfection.