Human Nature Quotes

Everybody looked at Sully suspiciously. A rumor that he had burned up in the blaze had been circulating, and people had quickly adjusted to the idea of profound human tragedy. They were reluctant to give it up, Sully could tell. He smiled apologetically at the crowd.

~ Richard Russo

as Schulz himself has pointed out, Snoopy is capable of being 'one of the meanest' members of the entire Peanuts cast ... he is lazy, he is a 'chow-hound' without parallel, he is bitingly sarcastic, he is frequently a coward, and he often becomes quite weary of being what he is basically -- a dog. He is, in other words, a fairly drawn caricature for what is probably the typical Christian.

~ Robert L. Short

All growth toward perfection is but a returning to original existence.

~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Social hierarchy doesn’t hold a candle to the power of feeling isolated in your own skin.

~ Elyse Draper

How wrong and petty any life is.

~ David Wojahn

People who have suffered understand pain and are often the best at helping others.

~ Nadia Fezzani

Human nature must be something which always remains one and the same, but which may be carried out in manifold ways.

~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

. . .for in natures, as in seas, depth answers unto depth

~ Charles Dickens

An author’s operating charter is to unearth embedded symbols that reflect complementary and inconsistent relationships of our collective assemblage, combine harmonizing and contradictory conceptions that motivate us, and delve larger truths out of variable and erratic elements of human nature.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

If a man couldn’t control his beast, it could turn so violent that nothing could restrain it once enraged.

~ Eka Kurniawan

You look into it , the object flies off into air , your reasons evaporate , the criminal is not to be found , the wrong becomes not a wrong but a phantom , something like the toothache , for which no one is to blame , and consequently there is only the same outlet left again — that is , to beat the wall as hard as you can . So you give it up with a wave of the hand because you have not found a fundamental cause . And try letting yourself be carried away by your feelings , blindly , without reflection , without a primary cause , repelling consciousness at least for a time ; hate or love , if only not to sit with your hands folded . The day after tomorrow , at the latest , you will begin despising yourself for having knowingly deceived yourself . Result : a soap - bubble and inertia . Oh , gentlemen , do you know , perhaps I consider myself an intelligent man , only because all my life I have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything .

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Everyone must look out for himself, and the best time is had by those who're best able to decieve themselves.

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I once had every hope,’ he says. ‘The world corrupts me, I think. Or perhaps it's just the weather. It pulls me down and makes me think like you, that one should shrink inside, down and down to a little point of light, preserving one's solitary soul like a flame under a glass. The spectacles of pain and disgrace I see around me, the ignorance, the unthinking vice, the poverty and the lack of hope, and oh, the rain – the rain that falls on England and rots the grain, puts out the light in a man's eye and the light of learning too, for who can reason if Oxford is a giant puddle and Cambridge is washing away downstream, and who will enforce the laws if the judges are swimming for their lives? Last week the people were rioting in York. Why would they not, with wheat so scarce, and twice the price of last year? I must stir up the justices to make examples, I suppose, otherwise the whole of the north will be out with billhooks and pikes, and who will they slaughter but each other? I truly believe I should be a better man if the weather were better. I should be a better man if I lived in a commonwealth where the sun shone and the citizens were rich and free. If only that were true, Master More, you wouldn't have to pray for me nearly as hard as you do.

~ Hilary Mantel

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

~ Fakeer Ishavardas

Just because somebody smiles when he hands me a bag of shit, that doesn't mean I have to take it. I don't give a damn how friendly he is. It's what he does that matters.

~ David Morrell

I know enough about human nature to know that people generally prefer to find the most corrupt way of doing things possible, given enough incentive.

~ Tyrion Lannister

There is no limit to suffering human beings have been willing to inflict on others, no matter how innocent, no matter how young, and no matter how old. This fact must lead all reasonable human beings, that is, all human being who take evidence seriously, to draw only one possible conclusion: Human nature is not basically good.

~ Dennis Prager

There are instances, indeed, wherein men shew a vanity in resembling a great man in his countenance, shape, air, or other minute circumstances, that contribute not in any degree to his reputation; but it must be confess’d, that this extends not very far, nor is of any considerable moment in these affections. For this I assign the following reason. We can never have a vanity of resembling in trifles any person, unless he be possess’d of very shining qualities, which give us a respect and veneration for him. These qualities, then, are, properly speaking, the causes of our vanity, by means of their relation to ourselves. Now after what manner are they related to ourselves? They are parts of the person we value, and consequently connected with these trifles; which are also suppos’d to be parts of him. These trifles are connected with the resembling qualities in us; and these qualities in us, being parts, are connected with the whole; and by that means form a chain of several links betwixt ourselves and the shining qualities of the person we resemble. But besides that this multitude of relations must weaken the connexion; ’tis evident the mind, in passing from the shining qualities to the trivial ones, must by that contrast the better perceive the minuteness of the latter, and be in some measure asham’d of the comparison and resemblance.

~ David Hume

It is a human characteristic, which has been richly exploited in every era, that while hope of survival is still alive in a man, while he still believes his troubles will have a favorable outcome, and while he still has the chance to unmask treason or to save someone else by sacrificing himself, he continues to cling to the pitiful remnants of comfort and remains silent and submissive. When he has been taken and destroyed, when he has nothing more to lose, and is, in consequence, ready and eager for heroic action, his belated rage can only spend itself against the stone walls of solitary confinement. Or the breath of the death sentence makes him indifferent to earthly affairs.

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

People are like mussels. You can put them in a vat of boiling water, and some of them will pop open immediately. Some of them will have to float around in the water for a bit, then they’ll slowly release. Others never open up at all, no matter what sort of hot water they’re in.

~ Rhian J. Martin

Philanderers and swingers can see nothing beyond the needs of their genitals. Sexual craving is a part of our biology, but it is not who we are.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Sometimes, humanity surprises me with all its lack of control over the primordial urges. These innate urges are the biological traits that make us similar to the rest of the animal kingdom. But the modern qualities that make us superior to all the animals are intellect and self-control.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Being Good and Lazy human is Deadly combination.

~ Talees Rizvi

People are not hooked on YouTube, Twitter or Facebook but on each other. Tools and services come and go; what is constant is our human urge to share.

~ Alfred Hermida

Every person lives bounded by the structural formation of human anatomy and the provincial demands of the human condition.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Suddenly Dallington burst into speech. 'Listen, Lenox - I want to apologize...'Lenox waved a dismissive hand. 'You're young,' he said. 'There are many lessons before you, some harder than this one... All too often things are blurry, though, John. It's the way of the world. Humans are blurry creatures

~ Charles Finch

So everybody lives the way they're told to.The way they have to. Everybody most of the time. Not ever all the time. Hair style, clothing, manner of speech, ideas, cars, houses, and everything. Just like they have to. Even the way we walk. But not all the time. Comes a time when everybody breaks out. And that's the only characteristic of human nature I know of. Not greed, not obedience, not violence, nor any of those things the capitalists would have us believe are intrinsic. Only rebellion.

~ Helen Potrebenko

Perhaps there is a beast...maybe it's only us.

~ William Golding

The hostile attitude of conquering nature ignores the basic interdependence of all things and events - that the world beyond the skins is actually an extension of our own bodies - and will end in destroying the very environment form which we emerge and upon which our whole life depends

~ Alan W. Watts

In any case, it seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand, to answer rather than to ask, so that the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties.

~ Milan Kundera

You can live for a long time inside the shell you were born in. But one day it'll become too small.Then what? I ask.Well, then you'll have to find a larger shell to live in.I consider this for a moment. What if it's too small but you still want to live there?She sighs. Gracious, child, what a question. I suppose you'll either have to be brave and find a new home or you'll have to live inside a broken shell.

~ Christina Baker Kline

He had traded the lives of people he did not know for those of men he did.That was, he supposed, human nature.

~ Jim Butcher

Human nature was structured through the eons.What our environment of persistent scarcity has done to us during all that time is undeniable, it has transformed a particular behavior that insures collective survival in situations of scarcity into our “default” or basic code of behavior in all situations.

~ Haroutioun Bochnakian

We are, however, creatures of containment. We want all things in life packed into boxes that we can label. But just because we have the ability to label it, doesn't mean we really know what's in the box.It's kind of religion. It gives us comfort to believe we have defined something that is, by its very nature, indefinable. As to whether or not we've gotten it right, well, it's all a matter of faith.

~ Neal Shusterman

No human, no matter how ancient, or how popular, can be above the laws of Nature.

~ Abhijit Naskar

We are only human, and the Gods have fashioned us for love. This is our greatest glory and our greatest tragedy.

~ George R.r. Martin

What we call “Higher” behavior is elaborated by our abstract mind to ensure survival by an efficient cohesion of our clan.What we call “lower” behavior is to ensure survival at the expense of a rival, or to prevent the survival of a rival to be at our expense.So,Be they our “higher” and “lower” behavior/selves, our humanity and inhumanity, our “Divine” and “diabolic” trends, or any aspect of our Human Nature,All are created by our abstract mind to ensure survival in an environment of scarcity.But of course you can always choose to adopt “revelations” which present human nature as: A messed up image of a messed up supernatural coexistence between two messed up opposite supernatural entities with a messed up relation.Ultimately, we all think we choose by what we think we know.

~ Haroutioun Bochnakian

I reflected that it seemed to be in the nature of human beings to spend the first part of their lives mocking the cliches and conventions of their elders and the final part mocking the cliches and conventions of the young.

~ Michael Chabon

All life-forms are innocent, but man is the greatest innocent life-form that the universe has ever produced. Man is never created bad, as some primitive “revelations” claim. Man is both all-capable, and innocent; Man cannot have better attributes than the ones he already has. Once we defeat scarcity, the factor that has forced all our negative attributes into existence will be no more. Man’s nature is forged by scarcity. Man is a child of scarcity. Some men may currently live in abundance, even obscene abundance, but they still are the children of scarcity. We all are.

~ Haroutioun Bochnakian

Men are willing to keep their evil characters if they can but get rid fo their evil reputations. They are scrupulously studious of appearances.

~ F.w. Boreham