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Human Nature Quotes

Browse 4693 quotes about Human Nature.

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Human Nature Quotes

“The theory of Reincarnation, which originated in India, has been welcomed in other countries. Without doubt, it is one of the most sensible and satisfying of all religions that mankind has conceived. This, like the others, comes from the best qualities of human nature, even if in this, as in the others, its adherents sometimes fail to carry out the principles in their lives.”

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Author:Luther Burbank
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“We doubt not the destiny of our country that she is to accomplish great things for human nature, and be the mother of a nobler race than the world has yet known. But she has been so false to the scheme made out at her nativity, that it is now hard to say which way that destiny points.”

WorldWayHumansHas BeensMadeCountryHardMotherRaceKnownDestinyDoubtHuman NatureAccomplishGreat ThingsOur CountrySchemesNativity
Book:Memoirs, [ed.] by R.W. Emerson, W.H. Channing, and J.F. Clarke
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“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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“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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“Truth should be the first lesson of the child and the last aspiration of manhood; for it has been well said that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.”

ShouldFirstsHumansWellsChildrenHas BeensSaidTruthLastsBeliefEnjoyHuman NatureLessonsAspirationSovereignManhoodInquiryLove MakingWell Said
Book:Literary recreations and miscellanies
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“Government began in tyranny and force, began in the feudalism of the soldier and bigotry of the priest; and the ideas of justice and humanity have been fighting their way, like a thunderstorm, against the organized selfishness of human nature.”

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Book:Speeches, Lectures, and Letters
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“Among all the many great transitions that have marked the evolution of Western civilisation ... there has been only one-the triumph of Christianity -that can be called in the fullest sense a "revolution": a truly massive and epochal revision of humanity's prevailing vision of reality, so pervasive in its influence and so vast in its consequences as to actually have created a new conception of the world, of history, of human nature, of time, and of the moral good.”

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Author:David Bentley Hart
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“Although the progress of civilisation has undoubtedly contributed to assuage the fiercer passions of human nature, it seems to have been less favourable to the virtue of chastity, whose most dangerous enemy is the softness of the mind. The refinements of life corrupt while they polish the intercourse of the sexes. The gross appetite of love becomes most dangerous when it is elevated, or rather, indeed, disguised by sentimental passion.”

MindHumansHas BeensSeemsPassionSexLove IsEnemyHistoryVirtueProgressDangerousHuman NatureAppetiteSentimentalGrossPolishIntercourseCivilisationChastityRoman EmpireRefinementSoftness
Book:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
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“For human nature, being more highly pitched, selved, and distinctive than anything in the world, can have been developed, evolved,condensed, from the vastness of the world not anyhow or by the working of common powers but only by one of finer or higher pitch and determination than itself.”

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Book:Delphi Complete Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Illustrated)
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“I work very physically as an actor. The biggest thing for me has been the challenge of how to be this person [Olivia Pope] with the personal transformation that's going on for me physically... That hasn't been easy. It's been an awesome challenge for me...because so much of how I access character is through my body.”

PersonsHas BeensCharacterBodyRealityActorsEasyChallengesWorkFamilyGenerationsHuman NatureHealthTransformationStrategyIndividualityAccessPersonal Transformation
Author:Kerry Washington
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“I don't think women can have it all. I just don't think so...My husband and I have been married for 34 years, and we have two daughters. And every day you have to make a decision about whether you are going to be a wife or a mother. In fact, many times during the day you have to make those decisions...We co-opted our families to help us. We plan our lives meticulously so we can be decent parents. But if you ask our daughters, I'm not sure they will say that I've been a good mom.”

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Author:Indra Nooyi
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“I have been too long acquainted with human nature to have great regard for human testimony; and a very great degree of probability, supported by various concurrent circumstances, conspiring in one point, will have much greater weight with me, than human testimony upon oath, or even upon honour; both of which I have frequently seen considerably warped by private views.”

HumansLongHas BeensTruthViewsGreaterHuman NatureCircumstancesDegreesWeightRegardVariousHonourProbabilityTestimonyOathConspiring
Book:Lord Chesterfield's Letters
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“we are beginning to understand that this instinct of sex which has been so great a cause of suffering and shame and has been treated as a subject fit only for furtive whispers or silly jokes, is in fact one of the greatest powers in human nature, and that its misuse is indeed 'the expense of spirit in a waste of shame.”

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Book:Sex and Common-sense
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“But he who has been earnest in the love of knowledge and of true wisdom, and has exercised his intellect more than any other part of him, must have thoughts immortal and divine. If he attain truth, and in so far as human nature is capable of sharing in immortality, he must altogether be immortal.”

IfsHumansHas BeensScienceReligionHuman NatureDivineCapableIntellectImmortalityImmortalEarnestTrue Wisdom
Book:Plato: The Complete Works: From the greatest Greek philosopher, known for The Republic, Symposium, Apology, Phaedrus, Laws, Crito, Phaedo, Timaeus, Meno, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Parmenides, Protagoras, Statesman and Critias
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“Our sense of the full range of human nature, like our diet, has been steadily reduced. No matter how nourishing it might be, anything wild gets pulled - though as we'll see, some of the weeds growing in us have roots reaching deep into our shared past. Pull them if you want, but they'll just keep coming back again and again.”

IfsWantHumansHas BeensMatterMightPastGrowingHuman NatureRootsRangeDietsReachingWeedAgain And AgainComing BackBack Again
Author:Christopher Ryan
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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.”

MenHumansWellsDoeHas BeensMightDesireFunBrainHuman NatureExcuseHarmExcitementDissatisfiedMatchedClockwork
Book:The Collected Edition: Brighton rock
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“Gargoyles were the complement to saints; Leonardo's caricatures were complementary to his untiring search for ideal beauty. And gargoyles were the expression of all the passions, the animal forces, the Caliban gruntings and groanings which are left in human nature when the divine has been poured away. Leonardo was less concerned than his Gothic predecessors with the ethereal parts of our nature, and so his caricatures, in their expression of passionate energy, merge imperceptibly into the heroic.”

HumansHas BeensPassionEnergyLeftForceAnimalHuman NatureDivineExpressionConcernedIdealsSaintPassionateHeroicGothicPredecessorsCaricaturesComplementEtherealLeonardoComplementaryGroaningGargoylesCaliban
Author:Kenneth Clark
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“Many of the obstacles for change which have been attributed to human nature are in fact due to the inertia of institutions and to the voluntary desire of powerful classes to maintain the existing status.”

HumansHas BeensFactsDesirePowerfulClassHuman NatureInstitutionsObstaclesDuesInertia
Book:The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925 - 1953: 1931-1932, Essays, Reviews, and Miscellany
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“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 beings who take evidence seriously, to draw only one possible conclusion: Human nature is not basically good.”

HumansHas BeensMatterFactsYoungSufferingHuman BeingsHuman NatureWillingLimitsDrawsEvidenceInnocentConclusionReasonable
Book:Dennis Prager: Volume I
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“Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite. No one needs a scientist to measure whether humans are prone to knavery. The question has been answered in the history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann Landers. But people treat it like an open question, as if someday science might discover that it's all a bad dream and we will wake up to find that it is human nature to love one another.”

PeopleIfsThinkingNeedsHumansHas BeensBookDreamMightPsychologyRecordsHuman NatureLettersOppositesScientistTreatsClaimsWake UpSelfishNewspapersWickedSomedayEvolutionary PsychologyResearchersFlatteringLove One AnotherHistory BooksBad DreamKnavery
Author:Steven Pinker
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“In all general questions which become the subjects of discussion, there are always some truths mixed with falsehoods. I confess, there is danger where men are capable of holding two offices. Take mankind in general, they are vicious, their passions may be operated upon. We have been taught to reprobate the danger of influence in the British government, without duly reflecting how far it was necessary to support a good government. We have taken up many ideas upon trust, and at last, pleased with our own opinions, establish them as undoubted truths.”

MenMayHas BeensTwoIdeasGovernmentLastsPassionOpinionSupportTakenInfluenceSubjectsMankindHuman NatureDangerTaughtOfficeCapableBritishDiscussionFalsehoodViciousReflectingBritish Government
Author:Alexander Hamilton
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“I have never, in all my various travels, seen but two sorts of people I mean men and women, who always have been, and ever will be, the same. The same vices and the same follies have been the fruit of all ages, though sometimes under different names.”

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Book:The works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: including her correspondence, poems, and essays
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“The important distinction so well understood in America between a constitution established by the people, and unalterable by the government; and a law established by the government, and alterable by the government, seems to have been little understood and less observed in any other country. Wherever the supreme power of legislation has resided, has been supposed to reside also, a full power to change the form of government.”

PeopleWellsLittlesHas BeensImportantCountrySeemsGovernmentAmericaFormLawHuman NatureUnderstoodConstitutionSupremeDistinctionOther CountriesLegislationForms Of GovernmentPower To ChangeSupreme Power
Book:The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in 1788
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“It is a singular capriciousness of the human mind, that after all the admonitions we have had from experience on this head, there should still be found men, who object to the new constitution for deviating from a principle which has been found the bane of the old.”

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Book:The Fœderalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favor of the New Constitution, as Agreed Upon by the Fœderal Convention, September 17, 1787. Reprinted from the Original Text. With an Historical Introduction and Notes
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“If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price.”

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Author:Ronald Reagan
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