William James Quotes

Man is a social animal formed to please in society.

Human beings are a social species. We like to hang together in groups, just like wildebeests, just like lions. Wildebeests don't hang with lions because lions eat wildebeests. Human beings are like that. We do what that group does that we're trying to identify with.

Human beings are social animals; we devote a significant portion of our brain just to dealing with interactions with other humans.

Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.

Human beings are social creatures - not occasionally or by accident but always. Sociability is one of our lives as both cause and effect.

The human animal has evolved as a preeminently social animal.

Human beings all mimic each other.

We're social animals. We've got to get along together. It's in our nature. We're hardwired that way.

It's human nature to want to be with other people.

Humans are humans because we are able to communicate with each other and to organize to do things together that we can't do individually.

Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.

The work on ants has profoundly affected the way I think about humans.

The only thing I learnt in high school is that people are very violent and territorial.

For there is nothing so social by nature, [and] so unsocial by its corruption, as this race.

Mankind have always wandered or settled, agreed, or quarreled in troops and companies.

The balance between the cooperative and altruistic tendencies and those which are disoperative and egoistic is relatively close. Under many conditions the cooperative forces lose, In the long run, however, the group centered, more altruistic drives are slightly stronger. ... human altruistic drives are as firmly based on an animal ancestry as is man himself.

… the enforcement of public opinion depends on our appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of others; and this appreciation is founded on our sympathy, which it can hardly be doubted was originally developed through natural selection as one of the most important elements of the social instincts.

Our species likes being social.

How different a creature is man in society and man in solitude!

I had a natural aptitude for wanting to be the centre of attention and a definite skill for annoying people.

You learn a lot about human nature in a bar.

When the response to comedy becomes cheering instead of laughing, that is so irritating. It's the worst. Here's what cheering is: "Look at me!" That's what cheering is. Cheering is not "Hey, I agree with what you're saying"; cheering is "I'm liking this more than anybody else!"

Man is a social animal.

Many species reciprocate, but only humans gossip, and much of what we gossip about is the vale of other people as partners for reciprocal relationships.

Humans are pack animals. In Biblical times, the great market cities in Europe or the United States, people want to be with other people. And in a way, the more that we're isolated, whether we're living on farms and we're only talking to our cell phone, the greater the need we have for group experience. So while people are saying that no one is going to go shopping because it's just inconvenient, and it's not as easy as buying online, why are people going to concerts? Why are people going to museums? Why are they going to sporting events?