Dark Side of Humanity Quotes

I do believe the world is a pretty sad, troubled, and violent place. Maybe that's why I focus on the trouble. Even though there are good people and good things, there's also a bunch of messed up stuff. And I learned early on, you have to have some trouble in your stories. I definitely go overboard on that, but I have a lot more fun writing about the trouble.

The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it.

Sometimes mortals can be more horrible than monsters.

Left to himself, man is half beast and half devil.

Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other.

There is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust.

Maybe the devil in human beings isn't the reflection of the devil, perhaps the devil is only a reflection of the savagery and brutality of our kind. Maybe what we've done is create the devil in our own image

I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.

Man, I can assure you, is a nasty creature.

Man is capable of greatness, love, nobility, compassion. Yet never forget that his capacity for evil is infinite. It is a sad truth, boy, that if you sit now and think of the worst tortures that could ever be inflicted on another human being, they will already have been practiced somewhere. If there is one sound that follows the march of humanity, it is the scream.

Man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was his very heaven.

The only monsters I have ever known were men.

I've since discovered that many human beings need no supernatural mentoring to commit acts of savagery; some people are devils in their own right, their telltale horns having grown inward to facilitate their disguise.

I think that human beings are capable of the worst things possible and they show that there were times, and there probably are times, that it is human to be inhuman.

There's evil in the world, all right. Being aware of it makes you a realist, not a paranoid.

It is silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars and hypocrites.

The poet's place, it seems to me, is with the Mr. Hydes of human nature.

The true horrors of human history derive not from orcs and Dark Lords, but from ourselves.

I think that human beings are capable of the worst things possible.

I know there’s evil in the world, and there always has been. But you don’t need to believe in Satan or demons to explain it. Human beings are perfectly capable of evil all by themselves.

I find I am more interested in the villain-type roles because they can be so much more complex than just the villain. I don't think anybody sees them as evil per se. They show how close we are to one another. It's an untapped area of art. And I think, physically, I'm not going to play the hero.

I studied the lives of jazz singers who would tour Europe, and... what I learned was life was big ride for them. They'd seen the dark side of humanity... but touring the world playing jazz, it was a truly carefree way of living. A great escapism, if you like.

Were one to ask me in which direction I think man strongest, I should say, his capacity to hate.