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Human Nature Quotes

Browse 4693 quotes about Human Nature.

Human Nature Quotes

“To be human is to keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence, hollering, 'What's it for?'”

Humans Humanity Existence Human Nature Bars Cages

Book:All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things

“A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.”

Ifs Men Humans Kind Dies Existence Conditions Human Nature Objects Refuse Historic

Book:The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt

Source: The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt

“A great and frequent error in our judgment of human nature is to suppose that those sentiments and feelings have no existence, which may be only for a time concealed. The precious metals are not found at the surface of the earth, except in sandy places.”

Humans May Character Feelings Earth Found Existence Human Nature Judgment Errors Surface Sentiments Metals Concealed Sandy Precious Metal

Book:Essays and aphorisms

Source: Essays and aphorisms

“Learning, like love, death and eating, are fundamental human activities. It's at the core of human existence and its character has a resilience of continuity that is part of what makes up human nature. That is not fundamentally going to change.”

Humans Character Existence Human Nature Activity Eating Fundamentals Resilience Core Continuity Human Existence Like Love Human Activity Love Death

Author:Leon Botstein

“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.”

“The star is the ultimate American verification of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile. His mere existence proves the perfectability of any man or woman. Oh wonderful pliability of human nature, in a society where anyone can become a celebrity! And where any celebrity . . . may become a star!”

Men Humans May Stars Existence Wonderful Human Nature Prove Ultimate Mere Verification Jean Jacques Rousseau Jacques Rousseau

Author:Daniel J. Boorstin

“However incoherent a human existence may be, human unity is not bothered by it.”

Humans May Existence Human Nature Unity Bothered Human Existence Not Bothered

Author:Charles Baudelaire

“The ultimate evil is the weakness, cowardice, that is one of the constituents of so much human nature. When, rarely, unalloyed nobility does occur, its chances of prevailing are slim. Yet it exists, and its mere existence is reason enough for not wiping the name of mankind off the slate.”

Humans Doe Reason Enough Evil Names Chance Existence Mankind Human Nature Weakness Ultimate Mere Human Condition Cowardice Nobility Prevailing Constituents Slate Slim

Author:John Simon

“In fact, the libertarian would reason that the fact that human nature is a mixture of both good and evil provides its own particular argument in his favor. For if man is such a mixture, then the best societal framework is surely one in which evil is discouraged and the good encouraged. The libertarian maintains that the existence of the State apparatus provides a ready, swift channel for the exercise of evil, since the rulers of the State are thereby legitimated and can wield compulsion in ways that no one else is permitted to do.”

Ifs Men Way Humans States Reason Facts Evil Existence Human Nature Particular Ready Exercise Argument Libertarian Favors Good And Evil Rulers Mixtures Discouraged Framework Compulsion

Author:Murray Rothbard

“Before modern man can gain control over the forces that now threaten his very existence, he must resume possession of himself. This sets the chief mission for the city of the future: that of creating a visible regional and civic structure, designed to make man at home with his deeper self and his larger world, attached to images of human nature and love.”

Men World Humans Self Home Force Cities Existence Modern Human Nature Creating Gains And Love Structure Possession Deeper Missions Chiefs Visible Civics Resumes Modern Man Love And Nature

Author:Lewis Mumford

“The Republican form of government is the highest form of government: but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature, a type nowhere at present existing.”

Thinking Humans Government Form Nature Existence Human Nature Type Republican Highest Republic Forms Of Government

Author:Herbert Spencer

“It is part of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible, are called forth in human beings towards those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that power.”

Humans Feelings Seems Human Beings Existence Human Nature Gratitude Irony Crush Strongest Devoted Refrain Susceptible Irony Of Life

Book:The Subjection of Women

Source: The Subjection of Women

“Human nature is so constituted that the propensity for evil is always intensified by external circumstances, and the morality of the individual depends much more on the conditions of his existence and the environment in which he lives than on his own will.”

Humans Evil Individual Existence Environment Conditions Human Nature Depends Circumstances Morality Propensity

Author:Mikhail Bakunin

“Could you understand the meaning of light if there were no darkness to point the contrast? Day and night, life and death, love and hatred, since none of these things can have any being at all apart from the existence of the other, you can no more separate them than you can separate the two sides of a coin.”

Ifs Humans Hard Light Night Sides Existence Darkness Human Nature Hatred Life And Death Contrast Day And Night Pierce Indolence Hatred And Love

Author:Elizabeth Goudge

“Paganism is that view of life which finds the highest goal of human existence in the healthy and harmonious and joyous development of existing human faculties. Very different is the Christian ideal. Paganism is optimistic with regard to unaided human nature, whereas Christianity is the religion of the broken heart.”

Source: Christianity and Liberalism

“Change is one of the scariest things in the world and yet it is also one of those variables of human existence that no one can avoid.”

World Humans Humanity Fear Nature Existence Human Nature Human Existence Variables

Author:Aberjhani

“If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature.”

Ifs Life Humans Long Shows Problem Running Answers Love Is Existence Human Nature Development Contradiction Sane Long Runs Human Existence

Author:Erich Fromm

“Humanity is at the very beginning of its existence-a new-born babe, with all the unexplored potentialities of babyhood; and until the last few moments its interest has been centred, absolutely and exclusively, on its cradle and feeding bottle.”

Has Beens Moments Lasts Science Humanity Interest Born Existence Human Nature Bottles Feeding Cradle Babe Unexplored Babyhood

Book:Nature

Source: Nature

“Nothing is more natural to men in office, than to look with peculiar deference towards that authority to which they owe their official existence.”

Men Looks Natural Existence Human Nature Office Authority Officials Peculiar Deference

Book:The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution

Source: The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution

“Man's existence precedes his essence”

Men Existence Human Nature Essence

Author:Jean-Paul Sartre

“Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.”

Source: Correspondence

“Man owes his strength in the struggle for existence to the fact that he is a social animal.”

Men Humans Facts Social Animal Existence Struggle Strength Human Nature Human Behavior Physicist Struggle For Existence Collective Effort

Book:Einstein's Violin: A Conductor's Notes on Music, Physics, and Social Change

Source: Einstein's Violin: A Conductor's Notes on Music, Physics, and Social Change

“America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government.”

Humans Government America Nations Voice Existence Rights Mankind Human Nature Foundation Presidential Spokes

Book:An Address, Delivered at the Request of the Committee of Arrangements for Celebrating the Anniversary of Independence: At the City of Washington on the Fourth of July 1821, Upon the Occasion of Reading the Declaration of Independence. ...

Source: An Address, Delivered at the Request of the Committee of Arrangements for Celebrating the Anniversary of Independence: At the City of Washington on the Fourth of July 1821, Upon the Occasion of Reading the Declaration of Independence. ...

“Creating new people, by having babies, is so much a part of human life that it is rarely thought even to require a justification. Indeed, most people do not even think about whether they should or should not make a baby. They just make one. In other words, procreation is usually the consequence of sex rather than the result of a decision to bring people into existence. Those who do indeed decide to have a child might do so for any number of reasons, but among these reasons cannot be the interests of the potential child. One can never have a child for that child’s sake.”

Source: Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence

“Those who would extirpate evil from the world know little of human nature. As well might punch be palatable without souring as existence agreeable without care.”

Knows World Humans Wells Littles Might Care Evil Existence Human Nature

Book:London Journal, 1762-1763, as First Published in 1950 from the Original Manuscript

Source: London Journal, 1762-1763, as First Published in 1950 from the Original Manuscript

“Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.”

Source: Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality