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Mark Twain7 quotes
Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to. — Mark Twain · 1897Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. — Mark Twain · 1893Everything has its limit—iron ore cannot be educated into gold. — Mark Twain · 1906A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs. — Mark Twain · 1897There's a good spot tucked away somewhere in everybody. You'll be a long time finding it, sometimes. — Mark Twain · 1910No man has a wholly undiseased mind; that in one way or another all men are mad. — Mark Twain · 1910All 7 quotes →Aristotle4 quotes
All men by nature desire to know. — Aristotle · 322 BCMan is by nature a political animal. — Aristotle · 350 BCNeither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit. — Aristotle · 322 BCMen are good in but one way, but bad in many. — Aristotle · 350 BCCarl Jung4 quotes
You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return. — Carl Jung · 1958Every civilized human being, whatever his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche. — Carl Jung · 1933People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. — Carl Jung · 1944Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health. — Carl Jung · 1916Aldous Huxley3 quotes
As long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable. — Aldous Huxley · 1937That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach. — Aldous Huxley · 1956Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. — Aldous Huxley · 1950Apostle Paul3 quotes
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. — Apostle Paul · 56Just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned. — Apostle Paul · 56For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. — Apostle Paul · 56James Madison3 quotes
It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. — James Madison · 1788Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob. — James Madison · 1788So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. — James Madison · 1787Niccolo Machiavelli3 quotes
Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasions for it. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1531So long as the great majority of men are not deprived of either property or honour, they are satisfied. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1532It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1531Abraham Lincoln2 quotes
If all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need of government. — Abraham Lincoln · 1854Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature—opposition to it, is [in?] his love of justice. — Abraham Lincoln · 1854Anatole France2 quotes
Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another. — Anatole France · 1881Rob him of his illusions, and man would perish of very weariness and despair. — Anatole France · 1922Charles Dickens2 quotes
There is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast. — Charles Dickens · 1837Subdue your appetites my dears, and you've conquered human nature. — Charles Dickens · 1838Edmund Burke2 quotes
We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy, to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt. — Edmund Burke · 1770To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind. — Edmund Burke · 1770Ernest Hemingway2 quotes
But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated. — Ernest Hemingway · 1952Everyone behaves badly...Give them the proper chance. — Ernest Hemingway · 1926Francis Bacon2 quotes
For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes. — Francis Bacon · 1620They that deny a God destroy a man's nobility, for certainly man is of a kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. — Francis Bacon · 1625Homer2 quotes
All men have need of the Gods. — Homer · 700 BCWe are quick to flare up, we races of men on the earth. — Homer · 700 BCMencius2 quotes
The tendency of man's nature to good is like the tendency of water to flow downwards. — Mencius · 300 BCBenevolence, righteousness, propriety, and knowledge are not infused into us from without. — Mencius · 300 BCRobert Louis Stevenson2 quotes
All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1886These are my politics: to change what we can; to better what we can; but still to bear in mind that man is but a devil weakly fettered by some generous beliefs and impositions; and for no word however nobly sounding, and no cause however just and pious, to relax the stricture of these bonds. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1885Thomas Hobbes2 quotes
I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651Man to Man is an arrant wolf. — Thomas Hobbes · 1642William Shakespeare2 quotes
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals-And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? — William Shakespeare · 1616What is a man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. — William Shakespeare · 1616Abba Eban1 quote
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. — Abba Eban · 1970Adam Smith1 quote
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. — Adam Smith · 1759Aeschylus1 quote
Neither anarchy nor tyranny—this I counsel my citizens to support and respect, and not to drive fear wholly out of the city. For who among mortals, if he fears nothing, is righteous? — Aeschylus · 458 BCAlbert Camus1 quote
Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. — Albert Camus · 1951Alexander Hamilton1 quote
Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787Alfred Adler1 quote
To be a human being means to possess a feeling of inferiority which constantly presses towards its own conquest... The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge for conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation. — Alfred Adler · 1956Alfred Tennyson1 quote
That which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. — Alfred Tennyson · 1842Alphonse de Lamartine1 quote
To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic. — Alphonse de Lamartine · 1849Anne Frank1 quote
It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals. They seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. — Anne Frank · 1944Arundhati Roy1 quote
Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things they could get used to. — Arundhati Roy · 1997Baruch Spinoza1 quote
If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil. — Baruch Spinoza · 1677Benjamin Franklin1 quote
To err is human, to repent divine; to persist devilish. — Benjamin Franklin · 1742