Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

I could claim any number of high-flown reasons for writing, just as you can explain certain dogs behavior... But maybe, it’s that they’re dog, and that’s what dogs do.

The whelp of a wolf must prove a wolf at last, notwithstanding he may be brought up by a man.

Personality is immediately apparent, from birth, and I don't think it really changes.

A zebra does not change its spots.

We don't invent our natures. They're issued to us along with our lungs, our pancreas and everything else.

A thing's innate disposition or God-given nature does not lie; whatever this innate disposition says is the truth.

That human behavior is more influenced by things outside of us than inside. The 'situation' is the external environment. The inner environment is genes, moral history, religious training.

There is no escaping from the conclusion that nature prevails enormously over nurture.

Humans have certain properties and characteristics which are intrinsic to them, just as every other organism does. That's human nature.

You just are born the way that you're born.

From spending my decades thinking about behavior and the biological influences on it, I'm convinced by now free will is what we call the biology that hasn't been discovered yet. It's just another way of stating that we're biological organisms determined by the physical laws of the universe.

I think there's something we all relate to about...wanting to get to our most primal self.

The dog is still in the natural state. And you can easily see that, because you have problems and your dog doesn't. And while your happy moments may be rare, your dog celebrates life continuously.

Every animal is providentially directed to the use of its proper weapon.

Animals never spend time dividing experience into little bits and speculating about all the bits they've missed. The whole panoply of the universe has been neatly expressed to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.

What's bred in the bone will stick to the flesh.

Children come into the world with a lot of personality already imbedded in them.

MAN IS FUNDAMENTALLY AN ANIMAL. Animals, as distinct from man, are not machine-like, not sadistic; their societies, within the same species, are incomparably more peaceful than those of man. The basic question, then is: What has made the animal, man, degenerate into a machine?

You don't take your cat with you to go bird shopping. Not because the cat isn't polite, but because he's a cat.

But you've changed,' I whisper. 'Haven't you?' It is the scorpian's nature to sting. Just because he has no opportunity doesn't mean that he cannot.

A leapord never changes his stripes.

I always find you go back to an animal; it will always show you the sort of primal aspects of behavior. You always know how to respond if you choose that.

I am who I am, born that way, and will die that way.

Beavers bred in captivity, inhabiting a concrete pool, will, if given the timber, fatuously go through all the motions of damming an ancestral stream.

A rat is neither good nor evil. It does what a rat has to do.