Humankind Human Nature Quotes

There's nothing more poisonous to a community than rumors and gossips. They taint the good character of those who effortlessly stand out. They provide mediocre individuals with a means to become relevant. They set in like gangrene and eat away at the sense of decency that differentiates humans from animals. ~ Wiss Auguste

Humankind doesn't have a genuine intellectual memory. They don't need the Truth. They don't want to know the Truth. ~ Robert Neil Fleischer

People need to make sure they have a good humor spark plug inside them that can be ignited at any moment when required. ~ Wes Adamson

It is noted that from 1967 to 1995 essays on negative emotions far outnumbered those on positive emotions in the psychological literature. The ratio was 21:1. Even those supreme perpetrators of pop nihilism, The New York Times and The Washington Post, have a better ratio than psychological literature. They average 12 negative stories to every one that might be construed to be non-negative. Many of their non-negative stories, however, cover success in sports and entertainment.

I demand that the purveyors of despair who pretend to be dispassionate observes of the human condition go ahead and disclose that the 10 most beautiful words in the English languages are chimes, dawn, golden, hush, lullaby, luminous, melody, mist, murmuring, and tranquil; that Java sparrows prefer the music of Back over that of Schoenberg; that math experts have determined there are 1/96 trillion ways to lace up your shoes; that the Inuit term for making love is translated as 'laughing together in bed;' and that according to Buckminster Fuller, "pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting. ~ Rob Brezsny

It seemed to Caleb, the nature of human being revolved around one empirical truth: we want what we cannot have. For Eve, it was the fruit of the forbidden tree. For Caleb, it was Livvie. ~ C.J. Roberts

The will not to believe. It is simple human nature. When the mind cannot grasp or face up to a horrible fact it turns away, as though refusing credence will conjure away the reality. ~ Herman Wouk

The formation in geological time of the human body by the laws of physics (or any other laws of similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field is as unlikely as the separation of the atmosphere into its components. The complexity of the living things has to be present within the material [from which they are derived] or in the laws [governing their formation]. ~ Kurt Godel

I would write of the universal, not the provincial, in human nature ... I would write of characters, not of characteristics. ~ Ellen Glasgow

Men cannot help that it is their nature to respond to the lewd, the salacious, and the vile. They will have difficulty doing otherwise until they are born again. ~ Billy Graham

Afghans think the burqa is a permanent part of culture. But, if you bring it to Europe, how would people react? Afghanistan doesn't want to change its culture, but it can change, all the time. So why are Afghans giving so much value to it? The burqa is not natural. It's not human nature. ~ Malina Suliman

I am a puzzle and a conundrum and a thunderstorm. ~ Brian Doyle

hat is the fundamental characteristic of the crocodile? The answer is clear: to swallow human beings. How is one, in constructing the crocodile, to secure that he should swallow people? The answer is clearer still: construct him hollow. It was settled by physics long ago that Nature abhors a vacuum. Hence the inside of the crocodile must be hollow so that it may abhor the vacuum, and consequently swallow and so fill itself with anything it can come across. And that is the sole rational cause why every crocodile swallows men. It is not the same in the constitution of man: the emptier a man's head is, for instance, the less he feels the thirst to fill it, and that is the one exception to the general rule. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

They don't deal with any basic difference in human nature between black and white ... , they only study the effects of environment on human nature. You place the white man in the ghetto, deprive him of educational advantages, arrange it so he has to struggle hard to fulfill his instinct for self-respect, give him little physical privacy and leisure time, and he would after a time assume the same characteristics you attach to the Negro. These characteristics don't spring from whiteness or blackness, but from a man's conditioning. ~ John Howard Griffin

The infrastructure of power is human neurosoft compatible ROM. Authority instantiates itself as linear instruction pathways, genetic baboonery, scriptures, traditions, rituals, and gerontocratic hierarchies, resonant with the dominator ur-myth that the nature of reality has already been decided. If you want to find ICE, try thinking about what is blocking you out of the past. It certainly isn't a law of nature. Temporalization decompresses intensity, installing constraint. ~ Nick Land

Even if you do the best you can in all things, your human nature must often fall short; so entrust yourself to God's goodness, for his goodness is greater than your failures. ~ Hadewijch

What this feeling produced was, quite simply, a keen awareness of the nature of human sin. That is what sent me back each month to K's grave. It is also what lay behind the nursing of my dying mother-in-law, and what bade me treat my wife so tenderly. There were even times when I longed for some stranger to come along and flog me as I deserved. At some stage this feeling transformed into a conviction that it should be I who hurt myself. And then the thought struck me that I should not just hurt myself but kill myself. At all events, I resolved that I must live my life as if I were already dead. ~ Soseki Natsume

The best indication of what human beings will do is not what they think, but what the record says similar groups have done in the past. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Inferiority is not banal or incidental even when it happens to women. It is not a petty affliction like bad skin or
circles under the eyes. It is not a superficial flaw in an otherwise
perfect picture. It is not a minor irritation, nor is it a trivial
inconvenience, an occasional aggravation, or a regrettable but
(frankly) harmless lapse in manners. It is not a "point of view"
that some people with soft skins find " offensive. " It is the deep
and destructive devaluing of a person in life, a shredding of dignity and self-respect, an imposed exile from human worth
and human recognition, the forced alienation of a person from
even the possibility of wholeness or internal integrity. Inferiority
puts rightful self-love beyond reach, a dream fragmented by
insult into a perpetually recurring nightmare; inferiority creates
a person broken and humiliated inside. The fragments -
scattered pieces and sharp slivers of someone who can never
be made whole - are then taken to be the standard of what is
normal in her kind: women are like that. The insult that hurt
her - inferiority as an assault, ongoing since birth - is seen as a
consequence, not a cause, of her so-called nature, an inferior nature. In English, a graceful language, she is even called a
piece. It is likely to be her personal experience that she is insufficiently
loved. Her subjectivity itself is second-class, her experiences
and ~ Andrea Dworkin

Discussions of death and such matters do more to unlock the human tongue than any other subject. ~ Agatha Christie

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

I have always thought that people are, by nature, nomadic, but they've built up anti-human constructs to keep them in place and then they pop pills to mask their misery and look for ways to distract from their emptiness. ~ Jackie Haze

If you record the world honestly, there's no way people can stop being funny. A lot of fiction writing doesn't get that idea, as if to acknowledge it would trivialize the story or trivialize human nature, when in fact human nature is reduced and falsified if the comic aspects are not included. ~ Lorrie Moore

The nature of how we are as human beings is that we're much more interested in being critical rather than praising something. ~ Ellie Goulding

It is not a mechanical routine but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being. The music is never the same for me, never. Each day is something new, fantastic, unbelievable. That is Bach, like nature, a miracle! ~ Pablo Casals

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him. ~ Samuel Johnson

But it's my reading of human nature that a man will cheat in his trade, but not in his hobby. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. ~ Jeanette Winterson

The world, nature, human beings, do not move like machines. The edges are never clear-cut, but always frayed. Nature never draws a line without smudging it. ~ Winston Churchill

I was a stray acquaintance whom he had never seem before and would never see again, a wandered for a moment through his monotonous life, and some starved impulse left him to lay bare his soul. I have in this way learned more about men in a night than I could if I had known them for 10 years. If you are interested in human nature, it is one of the greatest pleasures of travel. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Hold out your hands to feel the luxury of sunbeams. Press the soft blossoms against your cheek, and finger their graces of form, their delicate mutability of shape, their pliancy and freshness. Expose your face to the aerial floods that sweep the heavens, 'inhale great draughts of space,' wonder, wonder at the wind's unwearied activity. Pile note on note the infinite music that flows increasingly to your soul from the tactual sonorities of a thousand branches and tumbling waters. How can the world be shriveled when this most profound, emotional sense, touch, is faithful to its service? I am sure that if a fairy bade me choose between the sense of sight and that of touch, I would not part with the warm, endearing contact of human hands… ~ Helen Keller

The diversity of mankind is a basic postulate of our knowledge of human beings. But if mankind is diverse and individuated, then how can anyone propose equality as an ideal? Every year, scholars hold Conferences on Equality and call for greater equality, and no one challenges the basic tenet. But what justification can equality find in the nature of man? If each individual is unique, how else can he be made 'equal' to others than by destroying most of what is human in him and reducing human society to the mindless uniformity of the ant heap? ~ Murray Rothbard

I infer that God's decrees, and the necessity of event flowing thence, neither destroy the true free-agency of men, nor render the commission of sin a jot less heinous. They neither force the human will, nor extenuate the evil of human actions. Predestination, foreknowledge, and providence, only secure the event, and render it certainly future, in a way and manner (incomprehensibly indeed by us; but) perfectly consistent with the nature of second causes. ~ Augustus Toplady

Our memories are always faulty. They're tainted by our emotions and perceptions. We filter everything we take in by our experiences. I mean, you said yourself a few minutes ago. Did I say what you thought I did or did you hear what you wanted me to say? It doesn't make me a liar or you a fool. It's just human nature. People see what they want to see and they hear what they need or want to hear. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Even if your inner voice is friendlier, the dialogues you have with yourself often have to do with what's weighing on you - things like relationship problems, professional disappointments, health concerns, and the like. Human beings are by nature problem solvers, so in quiet moments, this is where our minds go. Our fixation on what needs to be fixed is why some people can't abide downtime and always have to have something to do so they won't think about what's wrong. However, trying to suppress your inner voice only gives it more power. It gets louder and more insistent, which makes some people get even busier and overscheduled to drown it out. It never works, though. Your inner voice is always there and, if it can't get your attention during the day, it will roust you at 4:00 a.m. Hello! Remember me? ~ Kate Murphy

Every man should be responsible to others, nor should anyone be allowed to do just as he pleases; for where absolute freedom is allowed there is nothing to restrain the evil which is inherent in every man. But the principle of responsibility secures that which is the greatest good in states; the right persons rule and are prevented from doing wrong, and the people have their due. It is evident that this is the best kind of democracy, and why? because the people are drawn from a certain class. ~ Aristotle.

Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way. ~ John Muir