Human Nature Quotes - Page 9

• The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Thought Provoking, Quality, Feeling Stuck

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.1062, Wordsworth Editions

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• As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other, and the former will be objects to which the latter attach themselves.

  James Madison

  Passion, Exercise, Men

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, Henry Barton Dawson (1864). “The Fœderalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favor of the New Constitution, as Agreed Upon by the Fœderal Convention, September 17, 1787. Reprinted from the Original Text. With an Historical Introduction and Notes”, p.57, New York : C. Scribner ; London : Sampson Low

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• The scientific approach to the phenomenon of human nature enables us to be ignorant without bieng frightened, and without, therefore, having to invent all sorts of wierd theories to explain away our gaps in knowledge.

  Donald Woods Winnicott

  Ignorant, Gaps, Theory

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• I do not think a philosopher who would apply himself so earnestly to the explaining the ultimate principles of the soul, would show himself a great master in the very science of human nature, which he pretends to explain, or very knowing in what is naturally satisfactory to the mind of man.

  David Hume

  Men, Thinking, Knowing

  David Hume (2015). “A Treatise of Human Nature: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.5, 谷月社

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• It is human nature that rules the world, not governments and regimes.

  Svetlana Alliluyeva

  Government, World, Regimes

  "Some Say Stalin's Daughter Grew Unhappy In The West" by Robert D. Mcfadden, www.nytimes.com. November 3, 1984.

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• By some ardent enthusiasts Chess has been elevated into a science or an art. It is neither; but its principal characteristic seems to be - what human nature mostly delights in - a fight.

  Emanuel Lasker

  Art, Fighting, Delight

  Emanuel Lasker (1965). “Common Sense in Chess”, p.9, Courier Corporation

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• Capitalism drives the employers to do their worst to the employed, and the employed to do the least for them. And it boasts all the time of the incentive it provides to both to do their best! . . . The reason the Capitalist system has worked so far without jamming for more than a few months at a time, and then only in places, is that it has not yet succeeded in making a conquest of human nature so complete that everybody acts on strictly business principles.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Principles, Incentives, Months

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• Men are not to be told anything they might find too painful; the secret depths of human nature, the sordid physicalities, might overwhelm or damage them. For instance, men often faint at the sight of their own blood, to which they are not accustomed. For this reason you should never stand behind one in the line at the Red Cross donor clinic.

  Margaret Atwood

  Pain, Men, Sight

  Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bluebeard's Egg”, p.23, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A man shall never be enriched by envy.

  Thomas Draxe

  Men, Envy

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• A too great disproportion among the citizens weakens any state. Every person, if possible, ought to enjoy the fruits of his labour, in a full possession of all the necessities, and many of the conveniences of life. No one can doubt, but such an equality is most suitable to human nature, and diminishes much less from the happiness of the rich than it adds to that of the poor.

  David Hume

  Political, Doubt, Add

  David Hume (1817). “Philosophical Essays: On Morals, Literature, and Politics”, p.284

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• No quality of human nature is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however different from, or even contrary to our own.

  David Hume

  Communication, Quality, Different

  David Hume (1874). “A Treatise on Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects; and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”, p.111

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• Feminism as a movement for political and social equity is important, but feminism as an academic clique committed to eccentric doctrines about human nature is not. Eliminating discrimination against women is important, but believing that women and men are born with indistinguishable minds is not. Freedom of choice is important, but ensuring that women make up exactly 50 percent of all professions is not. And eliminating sexual assaults is important, but advancing the theory that rapists are doing their part in a vast male conspiracy is not.

  Steven Pinker

  Believe, Men, Choices

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• Human nature means battling constantly between being completely self-absorbed and trying to be a communal creature. Nature makes you a communal creature. The ultimate single-minded, self-centered creature is a cancer cell. And mostly, we're not made up of cancer cells.

  George Lucas

  Cancer, Mean, Self

  "Cinematic Phenomenon". Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 19, 1999.

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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

  Business, Caring, Two

  "A New Approach to Capitalism in the 21st Century". Bill Gates' speech at World Economic Forum 2008 in Davos, Switzerland, news.microsoft.com. January 24, 2008.

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• The best movies are made from a point of view of an understanding of human nature and an understanding of history and an understanding of what motivates people, of what makes a good movie from an emotional place.

  Harrison Ford

  Emotional, Views, People

  "42 Interview with Harrison Ford, Chadwick Boseman & Brian Helgeland". www.moviesonline.ca.

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• Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark" . . . If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?

  John Adams

  Passion, Differences, People

  John Adams, Daniel LEONARD, Jonathan SEWALL (1819). “Novanglus and Massachusettensis; or, political essays, published in ... 1774 and 1775, on the principal points of controversy, between Great Britain and her colonies; the former by John Adams ... the latter by Jonathan Sewall [or rather, Daniel Leonard] ... To which are added a number of letters lately written by President Adams to the Hon. William Tudor, etc”, p.11

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• [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

  Men, Thinking, Blood

  John Locke (2015). “The Second Treatise of Civil Government”, p.82, Broadview Press

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• Compassion does not only refine and civilize human nature, but has something in it more pleasing and agreeable, than what can be met with in such an indolent happiness, such an indifference to mankind, as that in which the stoics placed their wisdom. As love is the most delightful passion, pity is nothing else but love softened by a degree of sorrow: In short, it is a kind of pleasing anguish, anguish as well as generous sympathy, that knits mankind together, and blends them in the same common lot.

  Richard Steele

  Passion, Love Is, Sorrow

  Richard Steele, Joseph Addison (1801). “The Spectator”, p.80

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• We do not need to be able to say what "human nature" is in order to be able to say that some training is "against human nature.

  Paul Goodman

  Order, Training, Needs

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.15, New York Review of Books

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• The ultimate evil is the weakness, cowardice, that is one of the constituents of so much human nature. When, rarely, unalloyed nobility does occur, its chances of prevailing are slim. Yet it exists, and its mere existence is reason enough for not wiping the name of mankind off the slate.

  John Simon

  Names, Evil, Slim

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• It's human nature for people to expect people to be what they see on the screen.

  Denis Leary

  People, Humans, Screens

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 22, 2005.

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• We liked the idea that it was a low-tech future. But everything always repeats the past. If you look today and look at something in the middle east where you got people getting beheaded it's like the crusades with Twitter. It's crazy, human nature does the same thing. In a way, even though you're in the future people wanted order so this sort of system rose up.

  Alfred Gough

  Crazy, Past, Order

  Source: www.indiewire.com

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• That weakness in human nature which goes by the name of strength.

  Peter Ustinov

  Names, Weakness, Humans

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• Dostoevsky - is not a realist as an artist, he is an experimentator, a creator of an experimential metaphysics of human nature.

  Nikolai Berdyaev

  Artist, Realist, Metaphysics

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• The truth is that cupidity, selfishness, envy, malice, lust, vindictiveness, are constant vices of human nature.

  William Graham Sumner

  Envy, Lust, Selfishness

  William Graham Sumner (1919). “The Forgotten Man - Rediscovered After Fifty Years ...”

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