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Human Nature Quotes

Browse 4693 quotes about Human Nature.

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Human Nature Quotes

“A lot of people just go to movies that feed into their preexisting and not so noble needs and desires: They just go to action pictures, and things like that. But if you go to foreign films, if you go to documentaries, if you go to independent films, if you go to good films, you will become a better person because you will understand human nature better. Movies record human nature in a better way than any other art form, that's for sure.”

PeopleIfsWayNeedsHumansPersonsArtActionFilmFormDesireRecordsHuman NatureIndependentNobleDocumentariesBetter WaysBetter PersonIndependent FilmGood Films
Author:Roger Ebert
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“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

WayHumorMotivationalMovingChangeHuman NatureAcceptanceChangedInspirational LifeDancingDanceMoving ForwardMake SenseMoving OnLife ChangingSelf AcceptanceGraduationMaking ChangesGood SensePlungeAdaptabilityJust DanceInspirational DanceEye OpeningShort DanceDance LifeLife Has ChangedChange And GrowthPeople ChangingAccepting ChangeHollownessFear Of ChangeMotivational DanceChanging AttitudeClassical DanceOpportunity To ChangeChange GrowthDance Is LifeAcceptance And ChangeDance MovesSelf Change
Book:The Wisdom of Insecurity
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“It’s funny. I met a man once who did a lot of mountain climbing. I asked him which was harder, ascending or descending? He said without a doubt descending, because ascending you were so focused on reaching the top, you avoided mistakes. The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature,” he said. “You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up.”

MenWayHumansSaidCareFightingMistakeDoubtHuman NatureMetsMountainHarderFocusedReachingClimbingAbout YourselfAvoidedMountain ClimbingDescendingAscendingBacksidesReaching The Top
Book:For One More Day
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“Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, of self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edifying, but because this is the way that human nature seems to work. We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind.”

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Book:The Spiral Staircase
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“Anything's possible in Human Nature," Chacko said in his Reading Aloud voice. Talking to the darkness now, suddenly insensitive to his little fountain-haired niece. "Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite joy." Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate Joy sounded the saddest. Perhaps because of the way Chacko said it. Infinnate Joy. With a church sound to it. Like a sad fish with fins all over.”

WayHumansLittlesSaidJoyReadingSoundVoiceChurchTalkingDarknessFourHuman NatureMadnessInfiniteFishesFountainSaddestInsensitiveNieceFinsReading Aloud
Book:The God of Small Things
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“Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice.”

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Author:Karen Armstrong
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“What I am really saying is that you don’t need to do anything, because if you see yourself in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomenon of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars, and the form of a galaxy. You are all just like that, and there is nothing wrong with you at all.”

IfsWayNeedsRunningFormStarsWaterInspiringFireTreeHuman NatureExtraordinaryCloudsPatternsPhenomenonArrangementsGalaxyRunning Water
Book:Still the Mind: An Introduction to Meditation
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“That was interesting, to find that it wasn't hunger that caused children to become bullies on the street. The bulliness was already in the child, and whatever the stakes were, they would find a way to act as they needed to act. … Intelligence and education, which all these children had, apparently didn't make any important difference in human nature.”

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Book:Ender's Shadow
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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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“Society is not a mere sum of individuals. Rather, the system formed by their association represents a specific reality which has its own characteristics... The group thinks, feels, and acts quite differently from the way in which its members would were they isolated. If, then, we begin with the individual, we shall be able to understand nothing of what takes place in the group.”

IfsThinkingWayFeelsRealityAbleIndividualGroupsHuman NatureMembersMereCharacteristicsAssociationIsolatedIf Then
Author:Emile Durkheim
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“Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature. . . . This faith may be enacted in statutes, but it is only on paper unless it is put in force in the attitudes which human beings display to one another in all the incidents and relations of daily life.”

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Book:The Later Works, 1925-1953
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“The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature; so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and philosophy to condor and humor. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.”

WorldWayLifeHumansMayPhilosophyHandsLife IsSpiritWinningHeavenKindnessHuman NatureAmbitionHatredAimProsperityVainGentleEmpiresTemperBloodyFlexibleStoopsAim Of LifeBloody Hands
Author:George Santayana
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“Yes. The way people behave, the paradoxes, the contradictions. All these things we have to live with and still pretend that everything is only black or white. That, I think, is the most interesting thing in human nature. The fact that we have to do one thing and pretend something else. That’s when it becomes very interesting. If you can literally speak the way you feel, then it’s not interesting anymore. It’s when you have to lie that it becomes interesting.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWayFeelsHumansStillsFactsLyingSpeakBlackWhiteInterestingOne ThingHuman NatureBehaveContradictionParadoxVery InterestingMost InterestingInteresting ThingsBlack Or White
Author:Vincent Cassel
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“Assuredly there is but one way in which to achieve what is not merely difficult but utterly against human nature: to love those who hate us, to repay their evil deeds with benefits, to return blessings for reproaches. It is that we remember not to consider men's evil intention but to look upon the image of God in them, which cancels and effaces their transgressions, and with its beauty and dignity allures us to love and embrace them.”

MenWayLoveHumansLooksRememberHateEvilDifficultAchieveHuman NatureReturnBlessingBenefitsDignityEmbraceIntentionDeedsOne WayLook UpReproachGod ImageTransgressionAllure
Author:John Calvin
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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.”

PeopleIfsWayTryingHumansLooksDoeStatesIndividualInterestAtheismEconomicConditionsHuman NatureGainsAspectInstitutionsPositive AtheismManageNovelistsOrganizedNew WaysHere And ThereProhibitionOrganized ReligionVested Interests
Author:E. M. Forster
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“Economic activity is no longer an adversarial contest between embattled sellers and buyers "In the distributed economy, where collaboration trumps competition, inclusivity replaces exclusivity and transparency and openness to others becomes essential to the new way of conducting business, empathic sensibility has room to breathe and thrive. It is no longer so constrained by hierarchies, boundaries of exclusion, and a concept of human nature that places acquisitiveness, self-interest, and utility at the center of the human experience."”

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Author:Jeremy Rifkin
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“I was a stray acquaintance whom he had never seem before and would never see again, a wandered for a moment through his monotonous life, and some starved impulse left him to lay bare his soul. I have in this way learned more about men in a night than I could if I had known them for 10 years. If you are interested in human nature, it is one of the greatest pleasures of travel.”

IfsMenWayLifeYearsHumansSoulMomentsSeemsNightLeftPleasureKnownHuman NatureLaysImpulseAcquaintanceMonotonousGreatest PleasuresMonotonous Life
Author:W. Somerset Maugham
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“The Tantric way is open to all the richness of human nature, which it accepts without a single restriction. It is probably the only spiritual path that excludes nothing and no one, and, in this way, it corresponds to the deep aspirations of men and women today.”

MenWayHumansTodaySpiritualAcceptingPathHuman NatureMen And WomenAspirationRestrictionRichnessSpiritual Path
Book:Tantric Quest: An Encounter with Absolute Love
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“It must be stressed that there is nothing insulting about looking at people as animals. We are animals, after all. Homo sapiens is a species of primate, a biological phenomenon dominated by biological rules, like any other species. Human nature is no more than one particular kind of animal nature. Agreed, the human species is an extraordinary animal; but all other species are also extraordinary animals, each in their own way, and the scientific man-watcher can bring many fresh insights to the study of human affairs if he can retain this basic attitude of evolutionary humility.”

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Book:Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior
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“A sad truth of human nature is that it is hard to care for people when they are abstractions, hard to care when it is not you or somebody close to you. Unless the world community can stop finding ways to dither in the face of this monstrous threat to humanity those words Never Again will persist in being one of the most abused phrases in the English language and one of the greatest lies of our time.”

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Book:An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography
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“Watch human nature; we are so built that if we do not get thrilled in the right way, we will get thrilled in the wrong. If we are without the thrill of communion with God, we will try to get thrilled by the devil, or by some concoction of human ingenuity.”

IfsWayTryingHumansWatchesHuman NatureDevilBuiltCommunionThrillRight WayIngenuityCommunion With God
Book:Biblical Ethics / The Moral Foundations of Life / The Philosophy of Sin: Ethical Principles for the Christian Life
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“Today the human race is a single twig on the tree of life, a single species on a single planet. Our condition can thus only be described as extremely fragile, endangered by forces of nature currently beyond our control, our own mistakes, and other branches of the wildly blossoming tree itself. Looked at this way, we can then pose the question of the future of humanity on Earth, in the solar system, and in the galaxy from the standpoint of both evolutionary biology and human nature. The conclusion is straightforward: Our choice is to grow, branch, spread and develop, or stagnate and die.”

WayHumansTodayEarthHumanityDiesChoicesForceGrowsRaceMistakeTreeConditionsHuman NaturePlanetsWalkingMoonSpeciesSpreadConclusionHuman RaceBranchesBiologyFragileGalaxyStraightforwardStandpointStar GazingOur ChoicesSolar SystemForces Of NatureTree Of LifeBlossomingTwigsEvolutionary BiologyFuture Of Humanity
Book:Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization
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