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Human Nature Quotes

Browse 4693 quotes about Human Nature.

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Human Nature Quotes

“Hypocrisy itself does great honor, or rather justice, to religion, and tacitly acknowledges it to be an ornament to human nature. The hypocrite would not be at so much pains to put on the appearance of virtue, if he did not know it was the most proper and effectual means to gain the love and esteem of mankind.”

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Book:The spectator
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“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”

IfsInspirationalDoeCharacterFaithHumanityHopeLosesVirtueSuccessfulMankindHuman NatureHonestyIntegrityOceanDirtyHave FaithHumankindSuccessful PeopleIncapableSuicidalHumanity And SocietyNon ViolenceSuccessful BusinessPeace And LoveGreat FaithHuman PersonalityOcean SeaOceans And SeasFaith In HumanityHuman CompassionPersonality TypesShared HumanityDirty MindsLosing FaithDrops In The OceanDirty SecretsBlue OceanDirty HandsHumanity And NatureDirty World
Book:The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi
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“Nowhere does history indulge in repetitions so often or so uniformly as in Wall Street. When you read contemporary accounts of booms or panics, the one thing that strikes you most forcibly is how little either stock speculation or stock speculators today differ from yesterday. The game does not change and neither does human nature.”

HumansLittlesDoeTodayGamesOne ThingStreetsHuman NatureWallAccountsStrikesYesterdayContemporaryPanicRepetitionSpeculationIndulgeIndulge InSpeculators
Book:Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
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“Analysis of rebellion leads at least to the suspicion that, contrary to the postulates of contemporary thought, a human nature does exist, as the Greeks believed. Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in oneself worth preserving? ... Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended.”

IfsMenHumansDoeHuman NatureNegativeOneselfContrarySelf WorthContemporaryPermanentAnalysisGreekRebellionRebelSuspicion
Author:Albert Camus
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“Running a multi-million dollar business can be frustrating at times, especially when someone does something I am not happy with. It might not even be their fault, but it is human nature to reach in an angry or heated way. However, I have learned an important and effective lesson. Rather than complain to my member of staff about their actions, I search my memory bank for things I find wonderful about them. This changes the energy around the issue instantly. People tend to live up to what you expect of them.”

PeopleWayHumansDoeImportantMightRunningActionEnergyMemoriesMillionsIssuesWonderfulHuman NatureLessonsMembersAngryDollarsFaultsComplainingI Have LearnedStaffFrustratingMillion DollarsNot Happy
Author:Vishen Lakhiani
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“Whatever was in the human nature of Christ was moved at the bidding of the divine will; yet it does not follow that in Christ there was no movement of the will proper to human nature, for the good wills of other saints are moved by God's will... For although the will cannot be inwardly moved by any creature, yet it can be moved inwardly by God.”

HumansDoeChristHuman NatureMovementDivineCreaturesMovedSaintGods WillGood WillBiddingDivine Will
Book:Summa Theologica, Volume 4 (Part III, First Section)
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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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“Evolution has no moral direction. An evolutionary understanding of human nature can explain the differing intuitions we have when we are faced with an individual rather than with a mass of people, or with people close to us rather than with those far away, but it does not justify those feelings.”

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Book:The Life You Can Save: How to play your part in ending world poverty
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“A traditionalist can sometimes be looked at as someone who is a fundamentalist, or they can be looked at as someone with a very strict set of understandings of human nature. But a traditionalist in the Vedic tradition, is one who is open-hearted, who does not judge, there's nothing to judge whatsoever, who understands the basic understanding and karma of all of it, and who basically helps when help is called for.”

HumansDoeSometimesHelpingUnderstandingHuman NatureJudgingTraditionKarmaStrictHeartedFundamentalist
Author:Maya Tiwari
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“It is a law of nature that everything run by the government will get more expensive and worse over time. Everything run by the private sector will get better and cheaper over time. The fact that [Obamacare] starts this badly does not bode well....We want healthcare run on the same system that gave us cell phones, flat screens, Jerry Garcia chia pets. Everything you submit to the free market...keeps getting better and better.”

WantWellsDoeFactsRealityGovernmentRunningLawPoliticalPoliticsMoneyPartyHistoryTechnologyDemocracyHuman NatureHealthCapitalismPhonesScreensIdeologyCellsGet BetterExpensivePetFlatsHealthcareSubmitConsumerismPolitical PartiesFree MarketLaws Of NatureCell PhoneObamacareCheaperPrivate SectorJerry
Author:Ann Coulter
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“If someone does learn about the world from reading a novel of mine, that makes me very happy. It's probably not what brings me into the novel in the first place - I usually am pulled in by some big question about the world and human nature that I'm not going to resolve in the course of the novel. But I'm very devoted to getting my facts straight.”

IfsWorldFirstsHumansDoeFactsBigsCoursesReadingNovelHuman NatureMinesResolveDevotedVery HappyBig Questions
Author:Barbara Kingsolver
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“Fun... human nature... does no one any harm... Regular as clockwork the old excuses came back into the alert, sad and dissatisfied brain--nothing ever matched the deep excitement of the regular desire. Men always failed you when it came to the act. She might just as well have been to the pictures.”

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Book:The Collected Edition: Brighton rock
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“Compassion does not only refine and civilize human nature, but has something in it more pleasing and agreeable, than what can be met with in such an indolent happiness, such an indifference to mankind, as that in which the stoics placed their wisdom. As love is the most delightful passion, pity is nothing else but love softened by a degree of sorrow: In short, it is a kind of pleasing anguish, anguish as well as generous sympathy, that knits mankind together, and blends them in the same common lot.”

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Book:The spectator
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“We liked the idea that it was a low-tech future. But everything always repeats the past. If you look today and look at something in the middle east where you got people getting beheaded it's like the crusades with Twitter. It's crazy, human nature does the same thing. In a way, even though you're in the future people wanted order so this sort of system rose up.”

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Author:Alfred Gough
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“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

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Book:The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection: Essays in Metaphysics, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Philosophy of Existentialism
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“What is a Poet? He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.”

MenHumansDoeSoulSpiritUniversePassionCommonGreaterMankindHuman NaturePoetEnthusiasmSupposed To BeRejoiceContemplatingTendernessSensibilityComprehensiveLivelyVolitionSpirit Of Life
Book:Poems
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“When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. The beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because deep down our human nature likes construction, and does not like destruction. Naturally, every action which is destructive is against human nature. Constructiveness is the human way. Therefore, I think that in terms of basic human feeling, violence is not good. Non-violence is the only way.”

IfsThinkingWayFeelsHumansDoeFeelingsHandsActionBeautifulFallTermViolenceHuman NatureDestructionDown AndPlantLikesBuddhistGrassDestructiveSunshineAutumnConstructionVery HappyLeafsFalling DownDeep DownNon Violence
Author:Dalai Lama
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“The history of human conduct does not warrant that exalted opinion of human virtue which would make it wise in a nation to commit interests of so delicate and momentous a kind as those which concern its intercourse with the rest of the world, to the sole disposal of a magistrate, created and circumstanced, as would be a president of the United States.”

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Book:The Federalist on the New Constitution
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“Science is the only news. When you scan a news portal or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same cyclical dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness; even the technology is predictable if you know the science behind it. Human nature doesn't change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly”

IfsKnowsWorldHumansDoeSaidStuffInterestBehindsTechnologyFashionHuman NatureDramaNewsIllusionEconomicsMagazinesPatheticPredictablePortalNewnessPolitics And EconomicsHe Said She Said
Author:Stewart Brand
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“If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people - a very few people, but a few novelists are among them - are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest in against such a search: organized religion, the state, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent.”

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Author:E. M. Forster
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“If idioms are more to be born than to be selected, then the things of life and human nature that a man has grown up with--(not that one man's experience is better than another's, but that it is 'his.')--may give him something better in his substance and manner than an over-long period of superimposed idiomatic education which quite likely doesn't fit his constitution. My father used to say, 'If a poet knows more about a horse than he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the horse may carry him into heaven'”

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Author:Charles Ives
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“Anyone who says the American Constitution is obsolete just because social and economic conditions have changed does not understand the real genius of the Constitution. It was designed to control something which has not changed and will not change—namely, human nature.”

HumansDoeRealLawPoliticalSocialChangeEconomicConditionsHuman NatureChangedGeniusConstitutionConservativeUsaObsoleteLack Of UnderstandingAmerican ConstitutionReal Genius
Book:The Five Thousand Year Leap
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“Real life is about accepting ups and downs, the good and the bad, the possibility of failure as well as the ambition to succeed. Atheism speaks to the truth about our human nature because it recognizes all this and does not seek to shield us from the truth by myth and superstition”

HumansWellsDoeRealLife IsSpeakAcceptingAtheismHuman NaturePossibilitySucceedAmbitionMythReal LifeSuperstitionsShieldsUps & Downs
Book:Atheism: A Very Short Introduction
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“Christianity has such a contemptible opinion of human nature that it does not believe a man can tell the truth unless frightened by a belief in god. No lower opinion of the human race has ever been expressed.”

MenBelieveHumansDoeBeliefRaceChristianityOpinionHuman NaturePositive AtheismHuman RaceTelling The TruthFrightenedBelief In God
Book:Ingersoll the Magnificent: To which Has Been Added a Special Arrangement of Some Gems from Ingersoll for Inspiration, Wisdom, and Courage
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“After all, I quite naturally want to live in order to fulfill my whole capacity for living, and not in order to fulfill my reasoning capacity alone, which is no more than some one-twentieth of my capacity for living. What does reason know? It knows only what it has managed to learn (and it may never learn anything else; that isn't very reassuring, but why not admit it?), while human nature acts as a complete entity, with all that is in it, consciously or unconsciously; and though it may be wrong, it's nevertheless alive.”

KnowsWantLifeHumansMayDoeReasonWholeOrderAliveHuman NatureCapacityLive LifeReasoningWhy NotEntityNeverthelessReassuring
Author:Fyodor Dostoevsky
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