Human Nature Quotes

It's been long since thinking humanity has learnt that love is a majestic creation of the brain, yet that knowledge hasn't made love be deemed any less glorious. Then why should it threaten the religious believer to learn that divinity as well is a natural creation of the brain?

It is only dogs that never bite their masters.

One thing that unites us all, one thing is universal among the human species; the anatomy. Big, small, fat, thin, colour or creed are irrelevant. Under the skin, under the flesh, we are one and the same. We desire the same things; love, money, power. All the things we can not have, not without cost.

Happiness thinks only of itself.

An envious heart makes a treacherous ear. They done 'heard' bout you just what they hope done happened.

Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my capacity for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning (some things, perhaps, it will never learn; this is a poor comfort, but why not say so frankly?) and human nature acts as a whole, with everything that is in it, consciously or unconsciously, and, even it if goes wrong, it lives.

Sin, blasphemy, heresy – all these are primitive ideas created by primitive creatures, unworthy of the title “human”.

You don't invent circumstances, but when they happen they reveal human nature.

Flesh is the Bible’s word for unperfected human nature. Leaving off the “h” and spelling it in reverse, we have the word self. Flesh is the self-life: it is what we are when we are left to our own devices.

Frankly, the only good people who I know are dogs.

Believe you me, I am all for you; and wish you well - for you to go to hell.

It's a funny things about human nature. Nobody ever wonders why they've got a healthy brother or a perfect kiddie. Anything goes wrong, though, we soon start why, oh why...

If you look at their intentions, examine their motives, and scrutinize what brings them contentment – how can people hide who they are? How can they hide who they really are?

The female brain is engineered to avoid conflicts at all cost, whereas the male brain pleasures conflicts in the purpose of being the boss.

The propensity of Earthlings to get into trouble, and to learn thereby, was the reason my owners agreed to this mad venture – although no one expected such a chain of unusual calamities as befell this ship. Your talents were underrated.

there is something magical and addicting about going somewhere, being alone, and finding yourself in parts of the world you never knew existed, finding parts of yourself you never knew you would find.

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest for sexual love - is well known and well charted, its vagaries form the staple of music and literature, it is socially accepted and celebrated. The second - the story of our quest for love from the world - is a more secret and shameful tale. If mentioned, it tends to be in caustic, mocking terms, as something of interest chiefly to envious or deficient souls, or else the drive for status is interpreted in an economic sense alone. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first, it is no less complicated, important or universal, and its setbacks are no less painful. There is heartbreak here too.

The New Your energy goes beyond anything you'll find anywhere else. It's too much for some people and it grinds them down, but it lifts up and animates the rest of us.

I love humanity, surprisingly, as I observe 21st century with hawk eyed vision, I realize the more I love humanity the less I love Human as an individual.

It wasn't the wild animals that scared her, but the civilised ones.

Human nature, essentially changeable, unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint; if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it renders everything asunder, the wall, and the bonds and its very self.

It's natural for a man to defend what's dear to him: his own life, his home, his family. But in order to make him fight on behalf of his rulers, the rich and powerful who are too cunning to fight their own battles-in short to defend not himself but people whom he's never met and moreover would not care to be in the same room with him-you have to condition him into loving violence not for the benefits it bestows on him but for its own sake. Result: the society has to defend itself from its defenders, because what's admirable in wartime is termed psychopathic in peace. It's easier to wreck a man than to repair him. Ask any psychotherapist. And take a look at the crime figures among veterans.

He had drawn a derogatory statement from George. He felt safe now.

Human hypocrisy: When one judges humanity as a whole, people have the habit of disagreeing, saying that everyone is different - unique. Yet people turn around and say that at the end of the day, everyone is the same. Ladies and gentlemen, the joyful paradoxical nature of humanity. If you really want to dismiss the paradox, show me that your an imaginary number, rather than a real number.

When we do something wrong we want people to forgive us but when someone does something wrong we never want to forgive them.

The rest were nondescript, as yet undifferentiated—yet nondescripts, thought Harriet, were the most difficult of all human beings to analyze. You scarcely knew they were there, until—bang! Something quite unexpected blew up like a depth charge and left you marveling, to collect strange floating debris.

Every man is sensitive. Some cover it up with brutality, others with cowardice and vanity, but a small few wear it bravely like armor

What you today perceive as beautiful and special, over time, becomes not so special. That’s how the human brain works.

If we define "beauty" as having blue eyes (and only blue eyes), then we will, indeed, find a "gene for beauty." If we define "intelligence" as the performance on only one kind of test, then we will, indeed, find a "gene for intelligence." The genome is only a mirror for the breadth or narrowness of human imagination.

After he had fully determined that the young man was at the bottom of this state of affairs, and that it all came from him, he Jean Valjean, the regenerated man, the man who had laboured so much upon his soul, the man who had made so many efforts to resolve all life, all misery, and all misfortune into love; he looked within himself, and there he saw a spectre, Hatred.

Since then I have searched for my heroes among small-t truths. I always find them among people learning the art of acceptance: not acceptance of defeat or acceptance of some inability to influence their own futures, but rather acceptance of life on the planet, acceptance of the grays rather than the black-and-whites, acceptance of the astonishing range of human emotion and human behavior.

Anya looked upon Nin admirably. Having him as a partner-in-crime—if only on this one occasion, which she hoped would only be the start of something more—was more revitalizing than the cheap thrills of a cookie-cutter shallow, superficial romance, where the top priority was how beautiful a person was on the outside.

Since humans are social animals, you’re basically only as good as your reputation.

Funny how addiction was socially acceptable—even a status symbol—when it made people extroverts rather than introverts

It's amazing how people can be so blind to what's good for them and what isn't, what's truth and what's not, or the difference between secrets and things just not yet known.

Our worldly wisdom has made us calloused and hard. Our natural wisdom, as the Scriptures teach, comes not from God, but is earthly, sensual, and devilish.

...for a man is a Herdentier - an animal that always follows the herd, a gregarious animal - and quickly follow's its neighbour example.

sometimes the human race likes to crank things up a little. They increase the production of bodies and their escaping souls.

Human beings are not nearly as coolly rational as we like to think we are. Having set up comfortable planets of belief, we become resistant to altering them, and develop cognitive biases that prevent us from seeing the world with perfect clarity. We aspire to be perfect Bayesian abductors, impartially reasoning to the best explanation - but most often we take new data and squeeze it to fit with our preconceptions.

We no longer have any time to waste, entertaining our dark side. It is time we recognize those evil elements of our internal world and start working untiringly on eradicating them.

Truth and untruth weave the seamless web of human nature.

Humanism is not a single character. It is a magnificent blend of various emotional and behavioral traits that are unique to the human mind.

It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense.

Fear or anxiety is a normal part of living. It’s the body’s way of telling us something isn’t right. It keeps us from harm’s way and prepares us to act quickly in the face of danger.

Nature has gone to great lengths to hide our subconscious from ourselves. Why?

People have been bred to hate for generations -- eons, maybe. Some fundamental urge. Something implicit in the human condition.

The purpose of the gospel is to make bad men good and good men better, and to change human nature.

It is unfortunate that for some, kindness is an unwarranted expenditure, compassion an avoidable weakness, and love an unnecessary gamble.

Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.

There are springs in the mind from which others cannot drink.

That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them.

People were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way.

For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.

And because the condition of man . . . is a condition of war of every one against every one, in which case every one is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in preserving his life against his enemies; it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing, even to one another's body. And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man, how strong or wise soever he be, of living out the time which nature ordinarily alloweth men to live. And consequently it is a precept, or general rule of reason: that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war. The first branch of which rule containeth the first and fundamental law of nature, which is: to seek peace and follow it. The second, the sum of the right of nature, which is: by all means we can to defend ourselves.

Homosexuals are not made, they are born.

Of course I contradict myself. Why else would I often bite my tongue and attempt to put the fire out?

While I was an honorable man in her eyes, she did not love me. But the minute she understood what I was, when she breathed the true and foul odor of my soul, love was born in her – for she does love me! Well, well! There is nothing real, then, except evil.

I am no feminist. Even though the term "feminism" is founded upon the basic principle of gender equality, it possesses its own fundamental gender bias, which makes it inclined towards the wellbeing of women, over the wellbeing of the whole society. And if history has shown anything, it is that such fundamental biases in time corrupt even the most glorious ideas and give birth to prejudice, bigotry and differentiation.

Humankind spends so much time admiring and ritualizing the inventions of humankind! And yet humankind is such a tiny part of all there is. -- Nigel S. Hey, Wonderment(Matador, 2012)

In primary school, there are kids who learn their conjugations and their multiplication tables. Me, I learned something more useful: the strong get off on walking all over other people, and wiping their feet while they're at it, like you would on a doormat.