Quotes about human nature

"Nothing.... Alone a man is nothing.....I wish I had some way to give the meaning of my life to others.... To make a bridge from man to man.... We must find some way of being good to ourselves.... Man is all we've got."

I headed toward home alone, really alone now, telling myself that in all the sprawling immensity of our mighty continent the least-known factor of living was the human heart, the least-sought goal of being was a way to live a human life. Perhaps, I thought, out of my tortured feelings I could fling a spark into this darkness. I would try, not because I wanted to but because I felt that I had to if I were to live at all.

If you inquire what the people are like here, I must answer, «The same as everywhere.»

That children don't know why they want what they want, all learned teachers and judges are unanimous. But that adults, just like children, tumble about in the world without knowing where they come from and where they're going—that they act in accordance with their avowed aims just as little as children do—that they can be ruled by cookies and cakes and lashes just as easily as children—this no one wants to believe, although it seems to me so palpably true.

We should judge a man much more surely from what he dreams than from what he thinks.

Man is neither angel nor brute, and the unfortunate thing is that he who would act the angel acts the brute.

Condition of man: inconstancy, weariness, unrest.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this. All our dignity consists, then, in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavour, then, to think well; this is the principle of morality.

If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.

The scoundrel has his good qualities, and the good man his weaknesses.

Numberless are the world's wonders, but none

More wonderful than man.

A creature of a more exalted kind

Was wanting yet, and then was Man designed;

Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,

For empire formed, and fit to rule the rest.