Human Nature Quotes
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I refuse to believe that the tendency of human nature is always downward.
Mahatma Gandhi -
No doubt hard work is a great police agent. If everybody were worked from morning till night, and then carefully locked up, the register of crime might be greatly diminished. But what would become of human nature? Where would be the room for growth in such a system of things? It is through sorrow and mirth, plenty and need, a variety of passions, circumstances, and temptations, even through sin and misery, that men's natures are developed.
Philip James Bailey
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A reasonable estimate of economic organisation must allow for the fact that, unless industry is to be paralysed by recurrent revolts on the part of outraged human nature, it must satisfy criteria which are not purely economic.
R. H. Tawney -
Truth ... is the sovereign good of human nature.
Francis Bacon -
How great, therefore, the wickedness of human nature is! How many girls there are who prevent conception and kill and expel tender fetuses, although procreation is the work of God.
Martin Luther -
Man is a talking animal and he will always let himself be swayed by the power of the word. Machines won't change human nature.
Simone de Beauvoir -
The defects of human nature afford us opportunities of exercising our philosophy, the best employment of our virtues. If all men were righteous, all hearts true and frank and loyal, what use would our virtues be?
Moliere -
I also came to see that liberalism's superficial optimism concerning human nature caused it to overlook the fact that reason is darkened by sin. The more I thought about human nature the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin causes us to use our minds to rationalize our actions. Liberalism failed to see that reason by itself is little more than an instrument to justify man's defensive ways of thinking. Reason, devoid of the purifying power of faith, can never free itself from distortions and rationalizations.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly. ... Hence they have had no trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy of the new doctrine from the very pulpit.
Galileo Galilei -
Shakespeare reveals human nature brilliantly: he shines a light on our instinctive desire to dominate each other.
Edward T. Hall -
For all good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates ... in the soul, and overflows from thence, as from the head into the eyes.
Plato -
You can’t study human nature in books. Books is a hindrance more than anything else
George W. Plunkitt -
Repeal the Missouri Compromise - repeal all compromises - repeal the Declaration of Independence - repeal all past history, you still can not repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart, that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.
Abraham Lincoln -
The mind is acquired "human nature". The conscience is inherent "spiritual nature".
Ian Gardner
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Human nature being what it is, peace must inevitably be a relative condition. The essence of life is struggle and competition, and to that extent perfect peace is an almost meaningless abstraction. Struggle and competition are stimulating, but when they degenerate into conflict it is usually both destructive and disruptive. The aim of political institutions like the United Nations is to draw the line between struggle and conflict and to make it possible for nations to stay on the right side of that line.
Javier Perez de Cuellar -
Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
It is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it.
Sigmund Freud -
We are reassured almost as foolishly as we are alarmed; human nature is so constituted.
Victor Hugo -
Social media amplifies both the good side and the dark side of human nature. ... Notwithstanding human ignorance, freedom of expression is essential.
Newton Lee -
H. G. Wells was not the only one to mention Churchill and Hitler in the same breath: "Churchill and Hitler are striving to change the nature of their respective countrymen by forcing and hammering violent methods on them. Man may be suppressed in this manner but he cannot be changed. Ahimsa [non-violence in the Hindu tradition], on the other hand, can change human nature and sooner than men like Churchill and Hitler."
Mahatma Gandhi
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The more I thought about human nature, the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin/mistakes causes us to use our minds to rationalize our action.
Martin Luther King, Jr. -
There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough.
George Bernard Shaw -
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.
John Stuart Mill -
The best movies are made from a point of view of an understanding of human nature and an understanding of history and an understanding of what motivates people, of what makes a good movie from an emotional place.
Harrison Ford