Human Nature Quotes
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It is essential to the sanity of mankind that each one should think the other crazy - a condition with which the cynicism of human nature so cordially complies, one could wish it were a concurrence upon a subject more noble.
Emily Dickinson
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Human nature is like a drunk peasant. Lift him into the saddle on one side, over he topples on the other side.
Martin Luther
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The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear from thrust back, by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.
John Stuart Mill
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War is so complex; human nature is so complex. There's no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly.
Angelina Jolie
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No doubt other writers have often put a thing more brilliantly, more subtly than even a very cunning artist in words can hope to emulate, a supreme phrase being a bit of luck that only happens now and then. And inasmuch as the condiments and secret travail of human nature are always the same, and that certain psychological moments must ever and ever recur, what more tempting than to pin down such a moment with the blow of a borrowed hammer?
Ethel Smyth
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If education is to develop human nature so that it may attain the object of its being, it must involve the exercise of judgment.
Immanuel Kant
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Power, after it has ceased from troubling, is the dominant passion in human nature.
Gertrude Atherton
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As I see it, there are two great forces of human nature: self-interest, and caring for others. Capitalism harnesses self-interest in a helpful and sustainable way, but only on behalf of those who can pay. Government aid and philanthropy channel our caring for those who can't pay. But to provide rapid improvement for the poor we need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today.
Bill Gates
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Democracy has no place for the kind of justice implied in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Democracy is a system for the resolution of conflict, not for vengeance. Simple black-white notions of right and wrong do not fit into democratic politics. Political controversies result from the fact that the issues are complex, and men may properly have differences of opinion about them. The most terrible of all over-simplifications is the notion that politics is a contest between good people and bad people. Democracy is based on a profound insight into human nature, the realization that all men are sinful, all are imperfect, all are prejudiced, and none knows the whole truth. That is why we need liberty and why we have an obligation to hear all men. Liberty gives us a chance to learn from other people, to become aware of our own limitations, and to correct our bias. Even when we disagree with other people we like to think that they speak from good motives, and while we realize that all men are limited, we do not let ourselves imagine that any man is bad. Democracy is a political system for people who are not sure that they are right.
Elmer Eric Schattschneider
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For human nature is strange: the less we are inclined to self-sacrifice, the more we insist on it in others.
Bolesław Prus
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In old age the secret springs of human nature are apt to come out.
Esther Forbes
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The evil is not that you cannot change human nature. The evil is that human nature cannot change you.
Barrows Dunham
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The curse of human nature is imagination. When a long anticipated moment comes, we always find it pitched a note too low, for the wings of imagination are crushed into its withering sides under the crowding hordes of petty realities.
Gertrude Atherton
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I think it's innate in human nature to want to make a difference, to make your life meaningful.
Barbara Marx Hubbard
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The best answer to all objections urged against prayer is the fact that man cannot help praying; for we may be sure that that which is so spontaneous and ineradicable in human nature has its fitting objects and methods in the arrangements of a boundless Providence.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin
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Everything happens for a reason. Like, I kind of hear people go, 'Man, you've been in a lot of bands.' Yes, I have. I've also been married several times, too, and every time I get into something, I think, 'This is the one.' I think that's just human nature.
John Corabi
Mötley Crüe
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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.
Arthur Helps
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When you're famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way. It stirs up envy, fame does.
Marilyn Monroe
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The words “human nature” can be the greatest obstacle to human growth.
Eugene J. Martin
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History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness.
Will Durant
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The fact of our deriving constant pleasure from whatever is a type or semblance of divine attributes, and from nothing but that which is so, is the most glorious of all that can be demonstrated of human nature; it not only sets a great gulf of specific separation between us and the lower animals, but it seems a promise of a communion ultimately deep, close, and conscious, with the Being whose darkened manifestations we here feebly and unthinkingly delight in.
John Ruskin
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To be enthusiastic about doing much with human nature is a foolish business indeed; and, throwing himself into his work as he was doing, and expecting so much from it, would not the tide ebb as strongly as it was flowing? It is a rash game this setting our hearts on any future beyond what we have our own selves control over. Things do not walk as we settle with ourselves they ought to walk, and to hope is almost the correlative of to be disappointed.
James Anthony Froude