Human Nature Quotes - Page 16

• It is human nature to seek revenge in the face of relentless suffering. You can’t expect an unhealthy person to think logically.

  Izzeldin Abuelaish

  Revenge, Thinking, Suffering

  Izzeldin Abuelaish (2011). “I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity”, p.4, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• 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.

  Thinking, Men, Optimism

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.65, Beacon Press

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• I am not [...] asserting that humans are either genial or aggressive by inborn biological necessity. Obviously, both kindness and violence lie within the bounds of our nature because we perpetrate both, in spades. I only advance a structural claim that social stability rules nearly all the time and must be based on an overwhelmingly predominant (but tragically ignored) frequency of genial acts, and that geniality is therefore our usual and preferred response nearly all the time. [...] [T]he center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Kindness, Lying, Usual

  "Eight Little Piggies". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness", p. 282, 1993.

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• The Terrible Truth is that brutality is part of human nature, and all the laws in the world can't neuter it.

  Greg Iles

  Law, Brutality, World

  Greg Iles (2009). “The Devil's Punchbowl: A Novel”, p.586, Simon and Schuster

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• A religious creed differs from a scientific theory in claiming to embody eternal and absolutely certain truth, whereas science is always tentative, expecting that modification in its present theories will sooner or later be found necessary, and aware that its method is one which is logically incapable of arriving at a complete and final demonstration.

  Bertrand Russell

  Religious, Adventure, Arriving

  "Religion and Science". Book by Bertrand Russell, Ch. I: Ground of Conflict, 1935.

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• Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing.

  George Meredith

  Struggle, Men, Reflection

  George Meredith (1922). “The Complete Works of George Meredith”, p.4327, Library of Alexandria

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• [Marriage] is the merciless revealer, the great white searchlight turned on the darkest places of human nature.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  White, Humans

  Katherine Anne Porter (2008). “Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories & Other Writings”, p.945, Library of America

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• The movie cheerfully offends all civilized notions of taste, decorum, manners and hygiene... The movie is vulgar? Vulgarity is when we don't laugh. When we laugh, it's merely human nature.

  Roger Ebert

  Vulgarity Is, Hygiene, Laughing

  Roger Ebert's review of "American Wedding", www.rogerebert.com. August 1, 2003.

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• Our human nature likes more to destroy than to build, more to cry than to smile, and more to correct the world than to love and embrace the world.

  Sri Chinmoy

  World, Likes, Cry

  "Meditations: Food For The Soul (April 25)". Book by Sri Chinmoy, 1971.

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• Reason is the glory of human nature, and one of the chief eminences whereby we are raised above our fellow-creatures, the brutes, in this lower world.

  Isaac Watts

  World, Glory, Reason

  Isaac Watts (1824). “Logic, or the right use of reason in the inquiry after truth”, p.9

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• We doubt not the destiny of our country that she is to accomplish great things for human nature, and be the mother of a nobler race than the world has yet known. But she has been so false to the scheme made out at her nativity, that it is now hard to say which way that destiny points.

  Margaret Fuller

  Country, Mother, Destiny

  Margaret Fuller, Arthur Buckminster Fuller (1874). “Memoirs, [ed.] by R.W. Emerson, W.H. Channing, and J.F. Clarke”, p.108

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• When the possessions and households of citizens are no longer honored by the acts, as well as the principles, of their government, then the concentration camp ceases to be one of the possibilities of human nature and becomes one of its likelihoods.

  Wendell Berry

  Government, Citizens, Principles

  Wendell Berry (2012). “The Long-Legged House”, p.27, Counterpoint Press

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• I am a thing not new, I am as old As human nature. I am that which lurks, Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed; The ancient trait which fights incessantly Against restraint, balks at the upward climb; The weight forever seeking to obey The law of downward pull; and I am more: The bitter fruit am I of planted seed; The resultant, the inevitable end Of evil forces and the powers of wrong.

  James Weldon Johnson

  Spring, Fighting, Law

  James Weldon Johnson, “Brothers”

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• Among the many strange servilities mistaken for pieties, one of the least lovely is that which hopes to flatter God by despising the world, and vilifying human nature.

  George Henry Lewes

  Lovely, World, Strange

  George Henry Lewes (1874). “Problems of Life and Mind”, p.23

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• Those works alone can have enduring success which successfully appeal to what is permanent in human nature -- which, while suiting the taste of the day, contain truths and beauty deeper than the opinions and tastes of the day.

  George Henry Lewes

  Taste, Opinion, Truth And Beauty

  George Henry Lewes (1891). “The Principles of Success in Literature”

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• The separation of Science from Knowledge was effected step by step as the Subjective Method was replaced by the Objective Method: i.e., when in each inquiry the phenomena of external nature ceased to be interpreted on premisses suggested by the analogies of human nature.

  George Henry Lewes

  Inquiry, Analogies, Steps

  George Henry Lewes (1864). “Aristotle: A Chapter from the History of Science, Including Analyses of Aristotle's Scientific Writings”, p.26

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• In some mysterious way, once one has gained an insight into human nature, that insight grows from day to day, and he to whom it has given to experience vicariously even one single form of earthly suffering acquires, by reason of this tragic lesson, an understanding of all its forms, even those most foreign to him, and apparently abnormal.

  Stefan Zweig

  Understanding, Suffering, Abnormal

  "Beware of Pity". Book by Stefan Zweig, 1939.

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• I'm an actor, and part of my joy and my curiosity about the job that I do, is that actors have the privilege of exploring human nature in different ways.

  Tom Hiddleston

  Jobs, Joy, Curiosity

  "Marvel Avengers Assemble - Tom Hiddleston interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• I don't want to be quoted as 'Tom Hiddleston, psychologist says...' But there is a psychological aspect to being an actor. We are particular students of human nature - not every actor is, of course, but that's what fascinates me about being an actor.

  Tom Hiddleston

  Actors, Want, Students

  "Marvel Avengers Assemble - Tom Hiddleston interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• I have been allowed to inhabit different shades of human nature and different colours of truth indifferent circumstances.

  Tom Hiddleston

  Different, Shade, Circumstances

  "Marvel Avengers Assemble - Tom Hiddleston interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• Art is a product of nature in general, in the particular form of human nature.

  Anton Webern

  Art, Form, Humans

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• Everyone wants an iPhone, but it would be impossible to design an iPhone in China because it's not a product; it's an understanding of human nature.

  Ai Weiwei

  Iphone, Design, Understanding

  " China's censorship can never defeat the internet" by Ai Weiwei, www.theguardian.com. April 15, 2012.

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• For human nature is so made that only what is unusual and infrequent excites wonder or is regarded as of value. We make no wonder of the rising and the setting of the sun which we see every day; and yet there is nothing in the universe more beautiful, or worthy of wonder. When, however, an eclipse of the sun takes place, everyone is amazed - because it happens rarely.

  Gerald of Wales

  Beautiful, Eclipse Of The Sun, Rising

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• 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.

  Amor Towles

  Book, Oddities, Two

  Amor Towles (2011). “Rules of Civility: A Novel”, p.79, Penguin

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• When I die my death will be caused by indignation at the stupidity of human nature.

  Marie Bashkirtseff

  Stupidity, Humans, Indignation

  Marie Bashkirtseff (1919). “Marie Bashkirtseff: the journal of a young artist, 1860-1884”

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