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Human Nature Quotes

Browse 4693 quotes about Human Nature.

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Human Nature Quotes

“Nothing can be more contrary to nature, to reason, to religion, than cruelty; hence as inhuman man is generally considered as a monster; such monsters, however, have existed; and the heart almost bleeds at the recital of the cruel acts such have been guilty of; it teaches us, however, what human nature is when left to itself; not only treacherous, but desperately wicked.”

MenHumansHeartHas BeensReasonLeftTeachHuman NatureContraryMonstersCrueltyGuiltyWickedInhumanTreacherousRecitals
Book:Miscellaneous Works of the Rev. Charles Buck, Author of the Theological Dictionary, Containing the Young Christian's Guide; Or, Suitable Directions, Cautions, and Encouragement, to the Believer on His First Entrance Into the Divine Life, a Treatise on Religious Experience: in which Its Nature, Evidences, and Advantages, are Considered; Together with Anecdotes, Religious, Moral, and Entertaining, Alphabetically Arranged, and Interpersed with a Variety of Useful Observations
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“For as long as men and women have talked about war, they have talked about it in terms of right and wrong. And for almost as long, some among them have derided such talk, called it a charade, insisted that war lies beyond (or beneath) moral judgment. War is a world apart, where life itself is at stake, where human nature is reduced to its elemental forms, where self-interest and necessity prevail. Here men and women do what they must to save themselves and their communities, and morality and law have no place. Inter arma silent leges: in time of war the law is silent.”

MenWorldHumansLongWarSelfFormLawLyingTermInterestCommunityMoralHuman NatureMoralityJudgmentMen And WomenSilentStakesSelf InterestElementalsMoral JudgmentCharadesWorlds Apart
Book:Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations
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“Though business conditions may change, corporations and securities may change, and financial institutions and regulations may change, human nature remains the same. Thus the important and difficult part of sound investment, which hinges upon the investor's own temperament and attitude, is not much affected by the passing years.”

YearsHumansMayImportantDifficultSoundAttitudeConditionsSecurityHuman NatureInstitutionsRemainsInvestmentFinancialPassingPassingsCorporationsAffectedInvestorsRegulationTemperamentHingesFinancial Institutions
Book:The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel
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“LSD is a unique and powerful tool for the exploration of the human mind and human nature. Psychedelic experiences mediate access to deep realms of the psyche that have not yet been discovered and acknowledged by mainstream psychology and psychiatry. They also reveal new possibilities and mechanisms of therapeutic change and personality transformation.”

MindHumansPowerfulPsychologyHuman NaturePossibilityPersonalityUniqueToolsTransformationAccessRealmsExplorationHuman MindMechanismMainstreamPsychiatryPsychedelicTherapeuticLsdPsychedelic ExperienceNew Possibilities
Author:Stanislav Grof
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“Back in the 1980s, when the internet was only available to a small number of pioneers, I was often confronted by people who feared that the strange technologies I was working on, like virtual reality, might unleash the demons of human nature. For instance, would people become addicted to virtual reality as if it were a drug? Would they become trapped in it, unable to escape back to the physical world where the rest of us live? Some of the questions were silly, and others were prescient.”

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Author:Jaron Lanier
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“A political life, I've often said, is a continuing education in human nature, including one's own. My involvement on the ground floor of two presidential campaigns and my duties as First Lady took me to every state in our union and to seventy-eight nations. In each place, I met someone or saw something that caused me to open my mind and my heart and deepen my understanding of the universal concerns that most of humanity shares.”

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Author:Hillary Clinton
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“The fundamental differences between Marxian and traditional orthodox economics are, first, that the orthodox economists accept the capitalist system as part of the eternal order of Nature, while Marx regards it as a passing phase in the transition from the feudal economy of the past to the socialist economy of the future.”

FirstsPastOrderPoliticsNatureCommunityDifferencesWorkMoneyAcceptingHistoryEconomyGenerationsHuman NaturePolicyEternalCapitalismEconomicsRegardFundamentalsStrategySocialismPassingPassingsTraditionalOrthodoxTransitionCapitalistPhasesSocialistEconomistSocialist Economy
Book:Essay on Marxian Economics
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“It is our genetic nature as a species to believe as young children that our parents and elders are right. We watch them to see what's what. Later on we can judge for ourselves and rebel if need be, but when we're just months old, or a year or two, and a parent looks at us with impatience, or disgust, or disdain, or just leaves us there to cry and doesn't answer us even though we're longing to be embraced and nurtured, we assume that something must be wrong with us. Unfortunately, at that age it's impossible to think there might be something wrong with them.”

IfsThinkingNeedsYearsBelieveLooksChildrenTwoMightAgeYoungParentAnswersWatchesImpossibleHuman NatureSelf EsteemCryJudgingMonthsEmbraceLongingAssumingParentingSpeciesRebelDisgustingEldersImpatienceRaising ChildrenYoung ChildrenDisdainBad Parenting
Author:Jean Liedloff
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“Whatever their limitations, Freud and Marx developed complex and subtle theories of human nature grounded in their observation of individual and social behavior. The crackpot rationalism of free-market economics merely relies on an abstract model of how people "must" behave.”

PeopleHumansIndividualSocialHuman NatureTheoryBehaviorModelsEconomicsComplexesObservationLimitationBehaveRelyAbstractSubtleGroundedFree MarketRationalismSocial BehaviorCrackpots
Author:Ellen Willis
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“Whenever the powers of government are placed in any hands other than those of the community, whether those of one man, of a few, or of several, those principles of human nature which imply that government is at all necessary, imply that those persons will make use of them to defeat the very end for which government exists.”

MenHumansPersonsEndsUseHandsGovernmentCommunityPrinciplesHuman NatureDefeatOne Man
Book:The Article Government: Reprinted from the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica
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“Trusting people to be creative and constructive when given more freedom does not imply an overly optimistic belief in the perfectibility of human nature. It is, rather, belief that the inevitable errors and sins of the human condition are far better overcome by individuals working together in an environment of trust and freedom and mutual respect than by individuals working under a multitude of rules, regulations, and restraints imposed upon them by another group of imperfect individuals.”

PeopleHumansDoeTogetherIndividualBeliefGivenSinCreativeEnvironmentGroupsConditionsHuman NatureOvercomingErrorsOptimisticInevitableWorking TogetherMutualImperfectHuman ConditionRegulationMultitudesRestraintBe CreativeConstructiveMutual RespectTrusting People
Author:Peter Senge
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“Human nature is full of riddles; . . . one of those riddles is: how is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find strength in themselves to rise up and free themselves first in spirit and then in body while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly lose the taste of freedom, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery?'”

PeopleFirstsHumansHas BeensBodySpiritLostLosesHuman NatureTasteWeightSlaveryBottomCastsConfusedSheerNeverthelessSoarCravePitsCrushedRiddleFinding StrengthLost And Confused
Author:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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“George Orwell was right. There's no greater genius as far as I'm concerned in terms of understanding human nature. I think that a lot of people just believe anything you tell them, and no matter what it is, they just go along with the program. They're perfectly happy to take their pill every day and do what they're told, and work and buy things, and work and buy things, and stay out of any complex emotional situations. And whatever the authorities tell them to do, they do, and whatever the authorities say is the truth, they believe is the truth.”

PeopleThinkingBelieveHumansMatterUnderstandingTermSituationGreaterHuman NatureEmotionalGeniusAuthorityConcernedProgramNo Matter WhatComplexesPillsJust Believe
Author:George Lucas
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“Comics play a trite but lusty tune on the C natural keys of human nature. They rouse the most primitive, but also the most powerful, reverberations in the noisy cranial sound-box of consciousness, drowning out more subtle symphonies. Comics scorn finesse, thereby incurring the wrath of linguistic adepts. They defy the limits of accepted fact and convention, thus amortizing to apoplexy the ossified arteries of routine thought.”

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Author:William Moulton Marston
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“All the controversialists who have become conscious of the real issue are already saying of our ideal exactly what used to be said of the Socialists' ideal. They are saying that private property is too ideal not to be impossible. They are saying that private enterprise is too good to be true. They are saying that the idea of ordinary men owning ordinary possessions is against the laws of political economy and requires an alteration in human nature.”

MenHumansSaidIdeasRealLawPoliticalUsedPoliticsEconomyIssuesImpossibleHuman NatureOrdinaryConsciousIdealsPropertyPossessionUsed To BeBeing TrueLiberalismEnterprisePrivate PropertyOrdinary ManAlterationsPolitical EconomyPrivate EnterpriseToo Good To Be True
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“With reason, then, the common opinion of mankind, little affected by the few dissentients who have contended for the opposite view, has found in the careful study of nature, and in the laws of nature, the foundations of the division of property, and the practice of all ages has consecrated the principle of private ownership, as being pre-eminently in conformity with human nature, and as conducing in the most unmistakable manner to the peace and tranquility of human existence.”

HumansLittlesReasonWisdomAgeLawFoundPoliticsViewsCommonExistenceOpinionPrinciplesPracticeEconomyStudyMankindHuman NatureOppositesFoundationPropertyCarefulLiberalismAffectedDivisionConformityOwnershipTranquilityLaws Of NatureHuman ExistencePeace And Tranquility
Author:Pope Leo XIII
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“Liberalism makes this mistake in regard to private property and Marxism makes it in regard to socialized property... The Marxist illusion is partly derived from a romantic conception of human nature... It assumes that the socialization of property will eliminate human egotism... The development of a managerial class in Russia, combing economic with political power, is an historic refutation of the Marxist theory.”

HumansWisdomPoliticalPoliticsMistakeClassEconomyEconomicHuman NatureTheoryDevelopmentIllusionRegardAssumingPropertyRussiaLiberalismConceptionHistoricMarxismEgotismPrivate PropertyPolitical PowerMarxistSocializationRefutationMarxist Theory
Author:Reinhold Niebuhr
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“It is the assumption of this book that there is a typical human nature. It is the aim of this book to seek it. Just like a surgeon, a psychiatrist can make all sorts of basic assumptions when a patient lies down upon the couch. He can assume that the patient knows what it means to love, to envy, to trust, to think, to speak, to fear, to smile, to bargain, to covet, to dream, to remember, to sing, to quarrel, to lie. The 'smile' of a baboon is a threat; the smile of a man is a sign of pleasure: it is human nature, the world over.”

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Author:Matt Ridley
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“Little white lies are part of everyday life. If youre in court being charged with a felony, youre probably going to be tempted to lie. Or if your girlfriend asks you if the sweater she is wearing makes her look fat; youre going to lie because you love that person. There are different reasons and justifications to lie; its human nature.”

IfsHumansLooksLittlesPersonsDifferentReasonLyingAsksWhiteHuman NatureCourtEverydayFatsGirlfriendJustificationEveryday LifeTemptedSweatersYour GirlfriendFelonyWhite Lie
Author:Monica Raymund
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