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Human Nature Quotes

Browse 4693 quotes about Human Nature.

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Human Nature Quotes

“In some mysterious way, once one has gained an insight into human nature, that insight grows from day to day, and he to whom it has given to experience vicariously even one single form of earthly suffering acquires, by reason of this tragic lesson, an understanding of all its forms, even those most foreign to him, and apparently abnormal.”

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Author:Stefan Zweig
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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.”

MindFirstsHumansHeartSaidTwoStatesPoliticalHumanityNationsUnderstandingSawsShareHuman NatureDutyMy HeartMetsConcernUniversalUnionsIncludingEightCampaignsPresidentialContinuingSeventiesInvolvementFirst LadyPolitical LifePresidential Campaign
Author:Hillary Clinton
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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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“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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“Adolescence is the time to enlarge the natural sentiments of pity, friendship, and generosity, the time to develop an understanding of human nature and the varieties of human character, the time to gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of all men and to study the history of mankind.”

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Book:Adolescence: The Farewell to Childhood
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“Human life is so strangely constituted that even perfected intellectual understanding combined with the richest experience is incapable of conquering innate weaknesses. Even if it thoroughly analyzes itself, psychology (and this is one of the dubious aspects of psychoanalysis) can, to be sure, recognize its flawed native characteristics, but it cannot eliminate them. Understanding (them) is not the same as overcoming (them) and, again and again, we see the wisest of human beings helpless in the fact of their small follies which everyone else observes with a smile.”

IfsHumansFactsLife IsUnderstandingHuman BeingsPsychologyHuman NatureIntellectualWeaknessAspectOvercomingConquerHuman LifeCharacteristicsFollyNativeAgain And AgainHelplessIncapableFlawedInnatePsychoanalysisWisestDubious
Author:Stefan Zweig
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“Finding God in all things is not an 'empirical eureka.' When we desire to encounter God, we would like to verify him immediately by an empirical method. But you cannot meet God this way...A contemplative attitude is necessary: it is the feeling that you are moving along the good path of understanding and affection toward things and situations. Profound peace, spiritual consolation, love of God, and love of all things in God-this is the sign that you are on this right path.”

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Author:Pope Francis
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“Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark" . . . If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?”

PeopleIfsHumansFeelingsPassionUnderstandingDifferencesLibertyPrinciplesVirtueSeeingMankindHuman NatureCapableVicesInjurySparksResentmentFreedom And LibertyFreedom LibertyIndignationLatentAmiableVenerationEvermoreAmerican LibertyTrue And False
Book:Novanglus and Massachusettensis; or, political essays, published in ... 1774 and 1775, on the principal points of controversy, between Great Britain and her colonies; the former by John Adams ... the latter by Jonathan Sewall [or rather, Daniel Leonard] ... To which are added a number of letters lately written by President Adams to the Hon. William Tudor, etc
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“Religion and science, for example, are often though to be opponents, but as I have shown, the insights of ancient religions and of modern science are both needed to reach a full understanding of human nature and the conditions of human satisfaction. The ancients may have known little about biology, chemistry, physics, but many were good psychologists.”

HumansMayLittlesUnderstandingKnownModernConditionsHuman NatureExampleNeededAncientSatisfactionInsightPhysicsOpponentsBiologyChemistryScience And ReligionPsychologistModern Science
Book:The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
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“Most people believe they know how they themselves think, how others think too, and even how institutions evolve. But they are wrong. Their understanding is based on folk psychology, the grasp of human nature by common sense ¾ defined (by Einstein) as everything learned to the age of 18 ¾ shot through with misconceptions, and only slightly advanced over ideas employed by the Greek philosophers”

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Author:E. O. Wilson
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“A commander should have a profound understanding of human nature, the knack of smoothing out troubles, the power of winning affection while communicating energy, and the capacity for ruthless determination where require by circumstances. He needs to generate an electrifying current, and to keep a cool head in applying it.”

NeedsShouldHumansWinningEnergyUnderstandingTroubleHuman NatureCircumstancesCapacityDeterminationShould HaveProfoundAffectionCurrentsCommunicateCommandersRuthlessKnack
Author:B. H. Liddell Hart
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“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

SelfSpiritualUnderstandingLeadershipBusinessPsychologyRelationshipAwarenessHuman NaturePositive ThinkingHumilityCommunicationWise WordsPerceptionDiscoverySelf AwarenessProfoundAnnoyingInteractionPartnershipOur RelationshipImitationBad AssThyselfRelationship AdvicePsychiatristPsychologistBe True To YourselfBeing SingleHuman RelationshipsOf My MindLove RelationshipFunny RelationshipIrritatingSynchronicityInteractingIrritatedMemories Dreams ReflectionsIrritationUnderstanding OthersSocial InteractionSelf UnderstandingRelationships With OthersSelf KnowingSelf-examinationHappy RelationshipInteracting With OthersKnowledge And UnderstandingCollective UnconsciousLove And RelationshipPsychoanalyticUnderstanding And LoveOptimistic LifeAwareness Of LifeLove WisdomFunny Being SingleUnderstanding YourselfLight Of My LifePerception Of OthersAwareness Of OthersWorking A LotSpiritual RelationshipInner DarknessProfound ThoughtsSpiritual PartnershipUnderstanding ThingsUnderstanding KnowledgeBeing AnnoyedTwo PersonalitiesReader's DigestUnderstanding EverythingBecoming Who You AreDeceiving Ourselves
Book:Memories, dreams, reflections
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“Conservatism vests in and depends on the widespread, informed understanding of human nature, self-governance and the First Principle of Progress: free people interacting in free markets produce the greatest good for the greatest number always, but only, when tethered to virtue and morality.”

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Author:Mary Matalin
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“The Idols of Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.”

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Book:New Atlantis and The Great Instauration
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“Understanding human nature must be the basis of any real improvement in human life. Science has done wonders in mastering the laws of the physical world, but our own nature is much less understood, as yet, than the nature of stars and electrons. When science learns to understand human nature, it will be able to bring a happiness into our lives which machines and the physical sciences have failed to create.”

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Book:Sceptical Essays
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“We are so full of apprehensions, fears, that we don't know exactly to what it points... a great change of our psychoglocal attitude is imminent, that is certain...because we need more understanding of human nature because ...the only real danger that exists is man himself... and we know nothing of man - his psyche should be studied because we are the origin of all coming evil.”

KnowsMenNeedsShouldHumansRealCertainEvilUnderstandingAttitudeHuman NatureDangerApprehensionGreat Change
Author:Carl Jung
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“Simplicity is a pleasant thing in children, or at any age, but it is not necessarily admirable, nor is affectation altogether a thing of evil. To be normal, to be at home in the world, with a prospect of power, usefulness, or success, the person must have that imaginative insight into other minds that underlies tact and savoir-faire, morality and beneficence. This insight involves sophistication, some understanding and sharing of the clandestine impulses of human nature. A simplicity that is merely the lack of this insight indicates a sort of defect.”

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Book:Two Major Works: Social Organization. Human Nature and the Social Order
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“Michael Koryta isn’t just one of the finest authors working in the crime genre today. He’s simply one of today’s finest authors, period. His stories are taut, compelling, and beautifully rendered. His understanding of human nature-the good, the evil, and all the gray between-is masterful. THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD is Koryta at his best.”

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Author:William Kent Krueger
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“Music is a manifestation of the human spirit, similar to language. Its greatest practitioners have conveyed to mankind things not possible to say in any other language. If we do not want these things to remain dead treasures, we must do our utmost to make the greatest possible number of people understand their idiom.”

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Author:Zoltan Kodaly
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“For my victory over Capablanca I am indebted primarily to my superiority in the field of psychology. Capablanca played, relying almost exclusively on his rich intuitive talent. But for the chess struggle nowadays one needs a subtle knowledge of human nature, an understanding of the opponent's psychology.”

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Author:Alexander Alekhine
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“The loss of the religious understanding of the human condition—that Man is a fallen creature for whom virtue is necessary but never fully attainable—is a loss, not a gain, in true sophistication. The secular substitute—the belief in the perfection of life on earth by the endless extension of a choice of pleasures—is not merely callow by comparison but much less realistic in its understanding of human nature.”

MenHumansEarthChoicesBeliefUnderstandingReligiousLossPleasureVirtueConditionsHuman NatureCreaturesGainsPerfectionEndlessFallenComparisonSubstitutesRealisticHuman ConditionSecularExtensionsSophistication
Book:Our Culture, What's Left of it: The Mandarins and the Masses
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“I think the need to believe in religion is and always was a need to know. Satisfying the NEED TO KNOW, be it by really knowing, by thinking we know or by believing we know, is very comforting for man. Be it by “direct” knowledge, Be it by “emotional” knowledge, Be it by “gut-felt” knowledge, Be it by “spiritual” knowledge, Be it by “transcendental” knowledge, Be it by “meditative” knowledge, Be it by “inspiration”, Be it by “revelation”, Be it knowing by faith or Be it by understanding, We definitely are one humanity under “need to know”.”

InspirationalUnderstandingKnowingHuman NatureHumanismSelf KnowledgeNeed To Know
Book:The Human Consensus and The Ultimate Project Of Humanity
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