Top 100 Quotes About Human Nature
#1. Time is the nervous system of narration, whether factual or fictive. If it gets confused some of the minutiae of human nature are certain not to work, not to glow, not to strike home.
Glenway Wescott
#2. One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
Walter Bagehot
#3. 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.
Bram Stoker
#4. Human nature is rarely so amusing as when trying to get a house off its hands. Women at this task can be untruthful enough, but their untruth lacks the infusion of candor which a skillful male liar can introduce.
E. V. Lucas
#5. So inconsiderable a thing is fortune in respect of human nature, and so insufficient to give content to a covetous mind, that an empire of that mighty extent and sway could not satisfy the ambition of two men;
Plutarch
#6. I have believed for a long time that human nature is a reciprocity of what is inside the skin and what is outside: that it is definitely not "rolled up inside us" but our way of being one with our fellows and our world. I call this field theory.
Gardner Murphy
#7. I think it's more optimistic about human nature to acknowledge that people are the products of their time but then to see that they have moments of grace and dignity that everybody has.
Eleanor Catton
#8. See, here's a shadow found; the human nature Is made th' umbrella to the Deity, To catch the sunbeams of thy just Creator; Beneath this covert thou may'st safely lie.
Francis Quarles
#9. Because it is human nature to believe the first story heard, and not its rebuttal.
Katherine Longshore
#10. 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
#11. It is human nature, especially as we get older, to look for stability in our lives. But if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to fight against that somewhat, as starting a business requires movement. You cannot stay still.
Robert Herjavec
#12. Those things interest me a lot in songwriting - the human nature of how people think, and the muck that we wind up in.
Jakob Dylan
#13. Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature can not be changed
Abraham Lincoln
#14. [H]e that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary.
John Locke
#15. So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason - to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?
Christina Baker Kline
#16. Youth is the period of harsh judgments, and a man seldom learns until he reaches thirty that human nature is made up not of simples, but of compounds.
Ellen Glasgow
#17. Happiness is only to be found in a recurrence to the principles of human nature; and these will prompt very simple measures.
Benjamin Disraeli
#18. But I know human nature, my friend, and I tell you that, suddenly confronted with the possibility of being tried for murder, the most innocent person will lose his head and do the most absurd things.
Agatha Christie
#19. What we call human nature, is actually human habit.
Jewel
#20. It was not so difficult to understand the warped view the Azadians had of what they called "human nature" - the phrase they used whenever they had to justify something inhuman and unnatural
Iain M. Banks
#21. When asked what attribute he most admired in human nature, Mahatma Gandhi replied, simply and immediately, 'Courage'. 'Nonviolence', he said, 'is not to be used ever as the shield of the coward. It is the weapon of the brave.
Richard Attenborough
#22. Doubt is human nature. It's what we do with it that matters.
Justin Cronin
#23. The space left to freedom is very small.ends are inherent in human nature and the same for all.
Hannah Arendt
#24. It is human nature, I suppose, to be futile and ridiculous.
Rafael Sabatini
#25. This intriguing 'somewhere else,' where intelligence no longer matters and awareness melts away, commands us to cherish our remains of innocence -- because of all the characteristics of human nature, the richest by far is passion for the perfectly useless.
Hans W. Silvester
#26. He taught us that everyone has a good story and the more of others you understand, the better your grasp of human nature, a gift given great weight in my family" (73). - Bill Clinton, "Paying Attention
Denzel Washington
#27. If language is intimately related to being human, then when we study language we are, to a remarkable degree, studying human nature.
Charlton Laird
#28. And there can be no end to greed because man, by his very exclusive human nature, is pathologically insatiable.
Mariano Ngan
#29. Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated.
William James
#31. In athletics there's always been a willingness to cheat if it looks like you're not cheating. I think that's just a quirk of human nature.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
#32. In any land, in any country under modern free competition, to lay any class of weak and despised people, be they white, black, or blue, at the political mercy of their stronger, richer, and more resourceful fellows, is a temptation which human nature seldom has withstood and seldom will withstand.
W.E.B. Du Bois
#33. On the twelfth of June, the forces of Western Europe crossed the borders of Russia, and war began
that is, an event took place contrary to human reason and to the whole of human nature.
Leo Tolstoy
#34. There is something mean in human nature that prefers to think evil, that gives a willing ear and a ready welcome to calumny, a sort of jealousy of goodness and greatness and things of good report.
Richard Le Gallienne
#35. The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have been flown for religious ideals.
William James
#36. Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.
Mahatma Gandhi
#37. The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the Hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.
Alexander Hamilton
#38. Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.
Liu Xiaobo
#39. The specific media my change, but the principles of human nature have remained fairly constant over the millenia.
Randal Marlin
#40. Ladies tell their nurses things in a sudden burst of confidence, and then, afterwards, they feel uncomfortable about it and wish they hadn't! It's only human nature.
Agatha Christie
#41. No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
#42. Human nature is what Heaven supplies.
Xun Zi
#43. America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government.
John Quincy Adams
#44. Web 2.0 ideas have a chirpy, cheerful rhetoric to them, but I think they consistently express a profound pessimism about humans, human nature and the human future.
Jaron Lanier
#45. Though I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. We tried a republic last century, and it failed. Let our enemies try next. I hate political experiments.
Robert Walpole
#46. A soul-winner can do nothing without God. He must cast himself
on the Invisible, or be a laughing-stock to the devil, who regards
with utter disdain all who think to subdue human nature with mere words and arguments.
Charles Spurgeon
#47. Men, in so far as they live in obedience to reason necessarily do only such things as are necessarily good for human nature, and consequently for each individual man.
Baruch Spinoza
#48. Times change. Every generation has a new set of problems. Human nature is unmoved.
David Harsanyi
#49. Laws have never been able to change human nature, and only God can change hearts.
Siri Mitchell
#50. With respect to human nature, we believe that the idea of God's image implies relationship and not any characteristic that would have left a mark in the paleoanthropological record.
Malcolm Jeeves
#51. Only the brave know how to forgive; it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at.
Laurence Sterne
#52. Human nature is eternal; therefore one who follows his nature keeps his original nature, in the end.
Orson Welles
#53. I have always thought that these two ways of talking, one is the fantastic, the fable, the fairy tale, and the other being history, the scholarly study of what happened, I think they're both amazing ways to understand human nature.
Salman Rushdie
#54. How good a society does human nature permit? How good a human nature does society permit?
Abraham H. Maslow
#55. 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 Hubbel Chapin
#57. There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.
David Hume
#58. There is something about human nature that just doesn't want to face the reality that we live in two worlds. We live in the physical, material world where we have jobs, read books, and go about our business. And we live in a spiritual world - and that is a world at war.
John Eldredge
#59. Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed.
Edith Hamilton
#60. I don't think we ever get away from the fear of labels and being different. It's human nature to want to be part of a community. That's why excommunication and solitary confinement are such brutal forms of punishment.
Matte Bach
#61. Tolerance is really a better thing than understanding. Because it doesn't agitate against human nature.
Fran Lebowitz
#62. Maybe war is an inevitable product of human nature. Maybe to get rid of war, we have to become something other than human.
Joe Haldeman
#63. There are superior, spiritual laws inherent in human nature
Sunday Adelaja
#64. Since to avoid the painful and aim at the pleasurable is one of the most obvious tendencies of human nature.
Aristotle.
#65. Distrust, not merely the old distrust of nation for nation, but a devastating distrust of human nature, gripped men like the dread of insanity.
Olaf Stapledon
#66. Everybody is vulnerable to being in relationships where they get fooled. I'm no different. It's just human nature.
Michelle Pfeiffer
#67. While human nature largely determines how we hear the notes, it is nurture that lets us hear the music.
Jonah Lehrer
#68. Human beings are always going to find interesting ways of making a mess of their lives. It's human nature.
Jack Nicholson
#69. The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.
Eric Hoffer
#70. Human nature is like a drunk peasant. Lift him into the saddle on one side, over he topples on the other side.
Martin Luther
#71. No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.
William Howard Taft
#73. Our human nature is exactly the same as it was 500 years ago, let alone five years ago.
David Duchovny
#74. Deep down, the boringly pragmatic Liberal Party has a sunnier view of human nature than the passionately idealistic Labor Party because we are prepared to put more trust in the common sense and decency of our fellow Australians.
Tony Abbott
#75. I've had a pretty good lesson in human nature. It's more important to try to surround yourself with people who can give you a little happiness, because you only pass through this life once, Jack. You don't come back for an encore.
Elvis Presley
#76. It's human nature - we want to believe our children, our families, our President!
Richard Gere
#77. Never forget the glory of human nature! We are the greatest god.. Christs and Buddhas are but waves in the boundless ocean which I AM.
Swami Vivekananda
#78. Literature's view of human nature encouraged understanding, sympathy, and identification with people not like oneself, but the world was pushing everyone in the opposite direction, toward narrowness,
Salman Rushdie
#79. I say you don't need religion, or political ideology, to understand human nature. Science reveals that human nature is greedy and selfish, altruistic and helpful.
Michael Shermer
#80. It's human nature to want to help and soothe and save with your love, but it's also arrogant.
Deb Caletti
#81. Irrational passions would seem to be as much a part of human nature as is reason.
Aristotle.
#82. We hear very often declarations on the demoralizing tendency of war, but as much as I hate war, I cannot be of the opinion that frequent wars are so corrupting to human nature as long peaces.
John Adams
#83. You can't ever win the war on crime, or the war on terror. You can't repeal human nature.
Robert Harris
#84. You always question what's new. It's human nature. While everything else, you know, no matter how strange, feels normal because you're trained to see it that way. You're brainwashed.
J.M. Darhower
#85. Sometimes i lose faith in human nature for a time; i am assailed by doubt.
William Faulkner
#86. Men are always more inclined to pitch their estimate of the enemy's strength too high than too low, such is human nature.
Carl Von Clausewitz
#88. Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.
Jane Austen
#89. People do judge books by their covers; it's human nature. They react to the way you look before they hear a single word that comes out of your mouth.
Jeff Garvin
#90. You can learn more about human nature by reading the Bible than by living in New York.
William Lyon Phelps
#91. The greatest danger that besets us does not come from believers or atheists; it comes from those who, under the guise of religion, science or reason, imagine that we can free ourselves from the limitations of human nature and perfect the human species.
Chris Hedges
#92. There is, as Miss Marple would say, a lot of human nature in all of us.
Agatha Christie
#93. The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature; the celebrity reveals the possibilities of the media.
Daniel J. Boorstin
#94. Yet, whether to the glory or to the shame of human nature, in what we call pleasure (with an excess of scorn, perhaps) there are abysses as deep as those of love.
Jules Amedee Barbey D'Aurevilly
#96. But it's my reading of human nature that a man will cheat in his trade, but not in his hobby.
G.K. Chesterton
#98. Nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature ... what compulsions drive a man, what instincts dominate his action. If you know these things abut a person, you can touch him at the core of his being.
William Bernbach
#99. Christianity has such a contemptible opinion of human nature that it does not believe a man can tell the truth unless frightened by a belief in god. No lower opinion of the human race has ever been expressed.
Robert Green Ingersoll
#100. God knows greed won't vanish. Neither will hatred or chauvanism. Human nature is a stubborn thing. But it isn't beyond control. Even if our core impulses can;t be banished, they can be tempered and redirected.
Robert Wright
