Human Nature Quotes

1. "Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who arranged his conclusions probably with the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order. Out there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surely witnessed something crudely and essentially primitive. Something that had survived somehow the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically, betraying a scale of life monstrous and immature. He envisaged it rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men: when the forces of nature were still untamed, the Powers that may have haunted a primeval universe not yet withdrawn. To this day he thinks of what he termed years later in a sermon 'savage and formidable Potencies lurking behind the souls of men, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctively hostile to humanity as it exists.'("The Wendigo")"
Author: Algernon Blackwood

2. "It is a lovely oddity of human nature that a person is more inclined to interrupt two people in conversation than one person alone with a book."
Author: Amor Towles

3. "[There's] one... thing I can tell you about human nature: beautiful people are the last ones you want to befriend. Beautiful people float through life thinking that it's perfectly normal for others to gaze at them adoringly, and open doors for them, and defer to their opinion... Doesn't anyone understand that beautiful people are stupid? That's why nature made them beautiful, so they'd have a chance at surviving in the wild. And how do they survive? They use people and then they drop people, and they float away on the currents of their own gorgeousness to the next poor girl who thinks that being friends with a beutiful person will somehow make her beautiful, too. I've got news for you: Hanging around beautiful people just makes you uglier by comparison."
Author: Amy Kathleen Ryan

4. "We have learnt that the exploration of the external world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted for penetrating. Feeling that there must be more behind, we return to our starting point in human consciousness - the one centre where more might become known. There we find other stirrings, other revelations than those conditioned by the world of symbols... Physics most strongly insists that its methods do not penetrate behind the symbolism. Surely then that mental and spiritual nature of ourselves, known in our minds by an intimate contact transcending the methods of physics, supplies just that... which science is admittedly unable to give."
Author: Arthur Stanley Eddington

5. "It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment."
Author: Bram Stoker

6. "In this world, the thing people fear the most, and what pains people the most— is giving more than they receive. God forbid I cut off more of my fingernail for you than you cut from your fingernail, for me! Heaven forbid I hold my breath in longer while thinking about you, than the amount of time your breath is held in for me! Not a second longer! It is sad fact of the human nature that there you stand as an Infinite Soul and yet your greatest fear is not receiving from another person in proportion to what you give. Your viewpoint is low, your vision is clouded. You have become, in your eyes, a funny little drawing on the paper pad of the universe. Indeed, this race is yet to evolve. And yet, I am surrounded by such fear, to such a great extent that I begin to fear the same!"
Author: C. JoyBell C.

7. "O Universo é algo que gera reverência, respeito. Em termos de tempo e espaço, sua escala torna a existência humana microscópica. É fascinante que as leis da natureza sejam as mesmas em todo o cosmos. A lei da gravidade, por exemplo, funciona aqui como a 1 bilhão de anos-luz de distância. Olhemos para cada detalhe, mínimo que seja, como para uma folha, e veremos que sua perfeição e harmonia são deslumbrantes. Creio que a folha resulta do processo de seleção natural, indicado por Darwin, ao longo de quase bilhões de anos de evolução da vida na Terra. Se olhamos essa mesma folha através de um microscópio, ficamos ainda mais maravilhados. Se alguém quer chamar esse sentimento de religioso, isso não me incomoda."
Author: Carl Sagan

8. "All holy books are, above all, great stories whose plots deal with the basic aspects of human nature, setting them within a particular moral context and a particular framework of supernatural dogma.-Andreas Corelli"
Author: Carlos Ruiz Zafón

9. "I think it's a very firm part of human nature that if you surround yourself with like-minded people, you'll end up thinking more extreme versions of what you thought before."
Author: Cass Sunstein

10. "No group-living nonhuman primate is monogamous, and adultery has been documented in every human culture studied- including those in which fornicators are routinely stoned to death. In light of all of this bloody retribution, it's hard to see how monogamy comes "naturally" to our species. Why would so many risk their reputations, families, careers- even presidential legacies- for something that runs against human nature? Were monogamy an ancient, evolved trait characteristic of our species, as the standard narrative insists, these ubiquitous transgressions would be infrequent and such horrible enforcement unnecessary. No creature needs to be threatened with death to act in accord with its own nature."
Author: Christopher Ryan

11. "Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without."
Author: Confucius

12. "Where there is true variety, there will be inevitable 'inequality' - that is simply the result of human nature and the pluralism that defines us as a people."
Author: Cory Bernardi

13. "The science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences. [All the other sciences] have a relation, greater or lesser, to human nature. ‘Tis impossible to tell what changes and improvements we might make in these sciences were we thoroughly acquainted with the extent and force of human understanding, and could explain the nature of the ideas we employ, and of the operations we perform in our reason."
Author: David Hume

14. "On present-day Earth we have the most Christ-like nation in human history, a civilization built on loving kindness and demilitarization. They are being wiped off the face of their homeland. Well, at least the Chinese government isn't blaming Christ or Buddha for their actions against Tibet! But many savage pillagers throughout the past two thousand years have, and the Romans of a thousand years ago fall into that category. Within five hundred years they erased nearly all the nature-based, matriarchal tribes in what we now know as Europe. The invaders falsified history in order to justify their greed. Harmless facts and beautiful rituals were twisted to appear Satanic. Love of the environment and its animals and plants, love of healing modalities that modern day health professionals are now searching frantically to recover, were spin-doctored into demented superstition and turned outlaw."
Author: Doug Ten Rose

15. "Why must there always be an underlying human benefit wherever decisions about nature are concerned? Our arrogance and selfishness is unprecedented. Why not save nature for nature's sake?"
Author: Dr Leslie Brown

16. "It will, of course, be understood that directly or indirectly, soon or late, every advance in the sciences of human nature will contribute to our success in controlling human nature and changing it to the advantage of the common weal."
Author: Edward Thorndike

17. "Song in the Manner of Housman" O woe, woe, People are born and die, We also shall be dead pretty soon Therefore let us act as if we were dead already. The bird sits on the hawthorn tree But he dies also, presently. Some lads get hung, and some get shot. Woeful is this human lot. Woe! woe, etcetera.... London is a woeful place, Shropshire is much pleasanter. Then let us smile a little space Upon fond nature's morbid grace. Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera...."
Author: Ezra Pound

18. "The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ would take the slums out of people, and then they would take themselves out of the slums.The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature."
Author: Ezra Taft Benson

19. "All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful."
Author: Flannery O'Connor

20. "The Olympian vice.--In defiance of that philosopher who as true Englishman tried to give any thinking person's laughter a bad reputation ('Laughter is a nasty infirmity of human nature that any thinking person will endeavour to overcome'---Hobbes), I would actually go as far as to rank philosophers according to the level of their laughter---right up to the ones who are capable of golden laughter. And assuming that gods, too, are able to philosophize, as various of my conclusions force me to believe, then I do not doubt when they do so, they know how to laugh in a new and superhuman fashion---and at the expense of everything serious! Gods like to jeer: it seems that even at religious observances they cannot keep from laughing."
Author: Friedrich Nietzsche

21. "The reason that history so often repeats is not only human nature, but also human ignorance."
Author: Glenn Beck

22. "Fun... human nature... does no one any harm... Regular as clockwork the old excuses came back into the alert, sad and dissatisfied brain--nothing ever matched the deep excitement of the regular desire. Men always failed you when it came to the act. She might just as well have been to the pictures."
Author: Graham Greene

23. "The Terrible Truth is that brutality is part of human nature, and all the laws in the world can't neuter it."
Author: Greg Iles

24. "If nonsatiety were the natural state of human nature then aggressive want-stimulating advertising would not be necessary, nor would the barrage of novelty aimed at promoting dissatisfaction with last year's model. The system attempts to remake people to fit its own presuppositions. If people's wants are not naturally insatiable we must make them so, in order to keep the system going."
Author: Herman E. Daly

25. "I will be guided by the Christian ethic and an awareness that human action is by nature transient."
Author: Horst Koehler

26. "It's what he is—a murderer fashioned only to steal what humans cannot live without and to spread his disease. He was created by the Dark Prince. No matter how long he tries to deny his nature by drinking from rats and squirrels, he will always be a threat to you and all others. Even more so because he can walk in the light."
Author: Inger Iversen

27. "There is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it."
Author: Jean Paul Sartre

28. "Physical nature lies at our feet shackled with a hundred chains. What of the control of human nature? Do not point to the triumphs of psychiatry, social services or the war against crime. Domination of human nature can only mean the domination of every man by himself."
Author: Johan Huizinga

29. "Mesmo no que se faz por prazer o conformismo é a primeira coisa em que se pensa; as pessoas desejam em grupo; exercem a escolha apenas entre coisas comummente feitas; fogem da peculiaridade de gosto e da excentricidade de conduta como de crimes; até que, à força de não seguirem a própria natureza, não têm mais natureza a seguir; as suas capacidades humanas mirram e morrem; tornam-se incapazes de desejos fortes e de prazeres naturais; e não apresentam, em regra, opiniões e sentimentos brotados do íntimo, propriamente seus. É essa, entretanto, a condição desejável da natureza humana?"
Author: John Stuart Mill

30. "There is no such sense of solitude as that which we experience upon the silent and vast elevations of great mountains. Lifted high above the level of human sounds and habitations, among the wild expanses and colossal features of Nature, we are thrilled in our loneliness with a strange fear and elation – an ascent above the reach of life's expectations or companionship, and the tremblings of a wild and undefined misgivings."
Author: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

31. "As humans, it is in our nature to focus on picking ourselves up while the whole world falls apart."
Author: Joshua Teya

32. "The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces - in nature, in society, in man himself."
Author: Leon Trotsky

33. "- Excellent, excellent, your plan is working. -- What plan? - I ask.- The plan to make her wonder if you love her. Nothing makes a women more curios then the suspicion that she's loved by someone. She'll do anything to confirm it now, you see. She'll go out of her way to find out if you really do. That's just human nature. Who doesn't want to be loved? -"
Author: Mahbod Seraji

34. "And there is no question that we are preoccupied by dying. But why? It is because when we die, we leave behind not only the world but also death. That is the paradox of the last hour. Death works with us in the world; it is a power that humanizes nature, that raises existence to being, and it is within each one of us as our most human quality; it is death only in the world - man only knows death because he is man, and he is only man because he is death in the process of becoming. But to die is to shatter the world; it is the loss of person, the annihilation of the being; and so it is also the loss of death, the loss of what in it and for me made it death. As long as I live, I am a mortal man, but when I die, by ceasing to be man I also cease to be mortal, I am no longer capable of dying, and my impending death horrifies me because I see it as it is: no longer death, but the impossibility of dying."
Author: Maurice Blanchot

35. "Is it some law of human nature that you inevitably become whatever your first commander was?"
Author: Orson Scott Card

36. "Why else do we read fiction, anyway? Not to be impressed by somebody's dazzling language - or at least I hope that's not our reason. I think that most of us read these stories that we know are not 'true' because we're hungry for another kind of truth: The mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story."
Author: Orson Scott Card

37. "Human nature is pretty shabby stuff, as you may know from introspection."
Author: Peter De Vries

38. "Human nature turns out to be more complicated than the idea that people will get along if only the rules are clear enough. Uncertainty, the ultimate evil that modern law seeks to eradicate, generally fosters cooperation, not the opposite."
Author: Philip K. Howard

39. ". . . we come astonishingly close to the mystical beliefs of Pythagoras and his followers who attempted to submit all of life to the sovereignty of numbers. Many of our psychologists, sociologists, economists and other latter-day cabalists will have numbers to tell them the truth or they will have nothing. . . . We must remember that Galileo merely said that the language of nature is written in mathematics. He did not say that everything is. And even the truth about nature need not be expressed in mathematics. For most of human history, the language of nature has been the language of myth and ritual. These forms, one might add, had the virtues of leaving nature unthreatened and of encouraging the belief that human beings are part of it. It hardly befits a people who stand ready to blow up the planet to praise themselves too vigorously for having found the true way to talk about nature."
Author: Pythagoras

40. "We have been told over and over that "you can't change human nature", but the study of emic realities shows quite the contrary, that almost anything can become "human nature" if society defines it as such."
Author: Robert Anton Wilson

41. "From this bestial view that the human mind consists of only sense certainty, pleasure and pain, Locke developed an equally bestial theory of the nation. Man originally existed in a State of Nature of complete liberty."
Author: Robert Trout

42. "Every time you accept the claim that you can't change human nature or you have to accept the way the world is, you are accepting the foundations of the worldview that grounded the ancien regime."
Author: Susan Neiman

43. "The idea that man is a tabula rasa, or Mao's sheet of blank paper upon which the most beautiful characters can be written, is an old one with disastrous implications. I do not think though that the cults you mention could survive honest thought about human nature."
Author: Theodore Dalrymple

44. "You think human nature is a beast, that it must be put in a cage. But it's the cage that makes the animal bad."
Author: Tom Stoppard

45. "Enquanto, por efeito de leis e costumes, houver proscrição social, forçando a existência, em plena civilização, de verdadeiros infernos, e desvirtuando, por humana fatalidade, um destino por natureza divino; enquanto os três problemas do século - a degradação do homem pelo proletariado, a prostituição da mulher pela fome, e a atrofia da criança pela ignorância - não forem resolvidos; enquanto houver lugares onde seja possível a asfixia social; em outras palavras, e de um ponto de vista mais amplo ainda, enquanto sobre a terra houver ignorância e miséria, livros como este não serão inúteis."
Author: Victor Hugo

46. "You need to have tremendous confidence in your work, even a touch of arrogance, chutzpah. Many very fine researchers lack intellectual daring. It's human nature to want to be cozy, secure. But that can be a cul de sac."
Author: Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

47. "Once you fall, Septimus repeated to himself, human nature is on you. Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. They scour the desert. They fly screaming into the wilderness. The rack and the thumbscrew are applied. Human nature is remorseless."
Author: Virginia Woolf

48. "Literature is, to my mind, the great teaching power of the world, the ultimate creator of all values, and it is this, not only in the sacred books whose power everybody acknowledges, but by every movement of imagination in song or story or drama that height of intensity and sincerity has made literature at all. Literature must take the responsibility of its power, and keep all its freedom: it must be like the spirit and like the wind that blows where it listeth; it must claim its right to pierce through every crevice of human nature, and to descrive the relation of the soul and the heart to the facts of life and of law, and to describe that relation as it is, not as we would have it be..."
Author: W.B. Yeats

49. "Good human work honors God's work. Good work uses no thing without respect, both for what it is in itself and for its origin. It uses neither tool nor material that it does not respect and that it does not love. It honors nature as a great mystery and power, as an indispensable teacher, and as the inescapable judge of all work of human hands. It does not dissociate life and work, or pleasure and work, or love and work, or usefulness and beauty. To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for. This is blasphemy: to make shoddy work of the work of God. But such blasphemy is not possible when the entire Creation is understood as holy and when the works of God are understood as embodying and thus revealing His spirit. (pg. 312, Christianity and the Survival of Creation)"
Author: Wendell Berry

50. "When we three spoke ourselves into human existences the Son of God, we became fully human. We also chose to embrace all the limitation that this entailed. Even though we have always been present in this created universe, we now became flesh and blood. It would be like this bird (a jay), whose nature it is to fly, choosing to only walk and remain grounded. He doesn't stop being a bird, but it does alter his experience of life significantly."
Author: Wm. Paul Young

Human Nature Quotes Pictures