Human Nature Quotes

Art is man's nature; nature is God's art.

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

The enemy of individuality is groupthink.

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.

It is much easier to start something than to finish it.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points.

Some people are by nature slaves and will always be so.

A zealot is a person who, having forgotten his original purpose, redoubles his efforts.

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains…an unuprooted small corner of evil. Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.

… when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an Assembly can a perfect production be expected?

Men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if they are attacked, but ... a powerful measure of desire for aggression had to be reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself

Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, and the taste of adventure over the love of comfort. A man doesn't grow old because he's lived a certain number of years, he grows old because he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skins, but deserting his ideals wrinkles his soul. Preoccupation, fears, doubts, and despair are dust before death. You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good, great and receptive to the messages of other men and women and nature and of God. If one day you should become bitter, pessimistic, and gnawed by despair, may God have mercy on your old man's soul.

The slowness of one section of the world about adopting the valuable ideas of another section of it is a curious thing and unaccountable. This form of stupidity is confined to no community, to no nation; it is universal. The fat is the human race is not only slow about borrowing valuable ideas—but sometimes persists in not borrowing them at all.

Considering mankind's indifference to freedom, their easy gullibility and their facile response to conditioning, one might very plausibly argue that collectivism is the political mode best suited to their disposition and their capacities. Under its regime, the citizen, like the soldier, is relieved of the burden of initiative and is divested of all responsibility, save for doing as he is told.

Our big social institutions do not reflect human nature; they distort it.

Think about how stupid the average person is and then realize that half of them are stupider than that.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.

The famine has been sent by God to teach the Irish a lesson.... The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.

Sex and sleep alone make me conscious that I am mortal.

If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is - and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

Sure the people are stupid: the human race is stupid. Sure Congress is an inefficient instrument of government. But the people are not stupid enough to abandon representative government for any other kind, including government by the guy who knows.