Human Nature Quotes - Page 11

• Happy Hour: a depressing comment on the rest of the day and a victory for the most limited Dionysian view of human nature.

  John Ralston Saul

  Happiness, Depressing, Views

  John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.157, Simon and Schuster

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• The nature of man is evil; what is good in him is artificial.

  Xunzi

  Men, Evil, Nature Of Man

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• It is disastrous to own more of anything than you can possess, and it is one of the most fundamental laws of human nature that our power actually to possess is limited.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Law, Fundamentals, Possession

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1964). “If You Don't Mind My Saying So ...: Essays on Man and Nature”

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• Order always weighs on the individual. Disorder makes him wish for the police or for death. These are two extreme circumstances in which human nature is not at ease.

  Paul Valery

  Order, Two, Police

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• The essence of being human is that, in the brief moment we exist on this spinning planet, we can love some persons and some things, in spite of the fact that time and death will ultimately claim us all.

  Rollo May

  Essence, Spinning, Facts

  Rollo May (1994). “The Courage to Create”, p.25, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Expecting to be able to get rid of the competitive drive, first of all, flies in the face of human nature - and little girls certainly have this drive, as much as little boys do, or at least the little girls I have observed in my immediate family have it.

  Lynne Cheney

  Girl, Boys, Littles

  "The Truth & Lynne Cheney". Women's Quarterly Interview, Spring 2001.

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• When people have peace, they hate it and long for excitement, and when they have excitement, they want peace.

  Amos Oz

  Hate, Long, People

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• It seems a pity that psychology has destroyed all our knowledge of human nature.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Psychology, Pity, Psychiatrist

  Observer 9 December (1934)

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• The best aphorisms are.... portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling. They furnish the largest amount of intellectual stimulus and nutriment in the smallest compass. About every weak point in human nature, or vicious spot in human life, there is deposited a crystallization of warning and protective proverbs.

  William Rounseville Alger

  Feelings, Intellectual, Weak Points

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• Just because we think we're so wonderful doesn't mean we really are. We could be really terrible animals and just never admit it because it would hurt so much.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Hurt, Mean, Animal

  Kurt Vonnegut (1997). “Hocus Pocus”, p.42, Penguin

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• Law is born from despair of human nature.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Law, Despair, Born

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• Whenever man forgets that man is an animal, the result is always to make him less humane.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Animal, Men, Forget

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• Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Future, Looks, Humans

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• There are times when you have to choose between being human and having good taste.

  Bertolt Brecht

  Taste, Being Human, Humans

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• 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

  Animal, Men, Talking

  Simone de Beauvoir (1968). “Les belles images”

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• The dictum that human nature cannot be changed is one of those tiresome platitudes that conceal from the ignorant the depths of their own ignorance.

  Bertrand Russell

  Ignorance, Ignorant, Depth

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• I got disappointed in human nature as well and gave it up because I found it too much like my own.

  J. P. Donleavy

  Too Much, Found, Wells

  J. P. Donleavy (2007). “A Fairy Tale of New York”, p.183, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Perhaps the most demanding trick in all of art is to know ways that are going to capture the attention of an audience right now, and yet to also hold an audience hundreds or thousands of years into the future in circumstances you just cannot imagine. You've got to go very deep into human nature to do that.

  Brian Boyd

  Art, Attention, Imagine

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• If human nature eventually is going to take the place of nature everywhere, those of us who have been naturalists will have to transpose the faith in nature which is inherent in the profession to a faith in man-if necessary, man alone in the world.

  Edward Hoagland

  Men, World, Naturalist

  Edward Hoagland, HOAGLAND EDWARD. (1995). “Tugman's Passage”, Lyons Press

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• The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor?

  David McCullough

  Luck, Tick, Humans

  Interview with Bruce Cole, www.neh.gov.

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• I actually think that secrets are just a part of human nature and that everybody should have some.

  Elizabeth Banks

  Thinking, Should Have, Secret

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• There are times when I, without willing it, mount to the height of contemplation; with my will I am drawn down from it because of the limitations of human nature and [find] safety in abasement. I know many things that are unknown to most men, yet I am more ignorant than all others. I rejoice because Christ, 'whom I have believed' (II Tim. 1:12), has bestowed on me an eternal and unshakable kingdom, yet I constantly weep as one who is unworthy of that which is above, and I cease not.

  Symeon the New Theologian

  Christian, Men, Safety

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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.

  Robert Zubrin

  Mistake, Moon, Race

  Robert Zubrin (1999). “Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization”, Tarcher

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• You know that a given in life in human nature, is that at a sporting event, a baseball game, a football game, you never introduce a politician, is because he'll be booed. I don't care if he's the most beloved person in the world, its part of the game.

  Mark Russell

  Baseball, Football, Games

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• Shakespeare reveals human nature brilliantly: he shines a light on our instinctive desire to dominate each other.

  Edward T. Hall

  Light, Shining, Desire

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