Jonah Lehrer Quotes

There is a tricycle in man. He knows, he feels and acts. He has emotion, intellect and will. He must develop head, heart and hand.

One of the best ways of understanding human nature is to study children. After all, if we want understand who we are, we should find out how we got to be that way.

I find male singers and what they sing about fascinating. It makes me realize how little we know about ourselves and how little I know about myself. It's interesting to see the male perspective.

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.

I'm a complete human being. I'm very emotional and loving. I feel, I hurt, I give, I take, and also I think. I analyze. I'm a sociologist, anthropologist.

Our intellectual development in the field of science has outstripped our human development in the field of character.

For a human being, nothing comes naturally,' said Grumman. 'We have to learn everything we do.

Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.

Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be.

Character isn't inherited.

Nature is a definite thing. But nurture is just as powerful. It can really mess with you.

Dr. Brainard Keyes Bullard, President of Wyandotte College, said in an address tonight that most of the worlds ills can be traced to the fact that Mans knowledge of himself has not kept pace with his knowledge of the physical world.

Men are but children of a larger growth.

That which is truly human no generation learns from the one before it. No generation learns from another how to love. No generation has a shorter task assigned to it except insofar as the previous generation shirked its task and deluded itself.

What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

It took me years to learn that character is fate and that no one can be made over.

A tree weeps when cut down, a dog howls when beaten, but a man matures when offended.

I was a bore and didn't know when to smile or fake it. Or rather worse, I did but didn't.

When I was happy I thought I knew men, but it was fated that I should know them in misfortune only.

I feel like the vast majority of the world's problems would disappear if suddenly everyone on the planet were relatively self-aware and capable of honest self-love and compassion.

People will go to endless trouble to divorce one person and then marry someone who is exactly the same, except probably a bit poorer and a bit nastier. I don't think anybody learns anything.

Children's books are written for upbringing...but upbringing is a great thing; it decides the fate of the human being.

Anne hoped she had outlived the age of blushing; but the age of emotion she certainly had not.

When emotional intelligence merges with spiritual intelligence, human nature is transformed.