Quotes on Human Nature

In the discharge of this trust I will only say that I have, with good intentions, contributed toward the organization and administration of the Government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable.

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society.

There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most people take less trouble about learning. An art school is a place where about three people work with feverish energy and everybody else idles to a degree that I should have conceived unattainable by human nature.

Slavery is ...an atrocious debasement of human nature.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is - and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive.

We cannot doubt that self-interest is the mainspring of human nature. It must be clearly understood that this word is used here to designate a universal, incontestable fact, resulting from the nature of man, and not an adverse judgment, as would be the word selfishness.

There is unquestionably a contradiction between an efficient technological machine and the flowering of human nature, of the human personality.

He does not seem to me to be a free man who does not sometimes do nothing.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

We are reassured almost as foolishly as we are alarmed; human nature is so constituted.

It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates.

Humans have certain properties and characteristics which are intrinsic to them, just as every other organism does. That's human nature.

Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success.

The same state of the passions which fits the multitude, who have not a sufficient stock of reason and knowledge to guide them, for opposition to tyranny and oppression, very naturally leads them to a contempt and disregard of all authority.

There may be in every government a few choice spirits, who may act from more worthy motives. One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are. Our prevailing passions are ambition and interest.

The passions of a revolution are apt to hurry even good men into excesses.

What is that we human beings ultimately depend on? We depend on our words. We are suspended in language. Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others.

A fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired.

It is a general principle of human nature, that a man will be interested in whatever he possesses, in proportion to the firmness or precariousness of the tenure by which he holds it.

Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.