Quotes about human nature

Human nature is, by definition, a talkative one, imprudent, indiscreet, gossipy, incapable of closing its mouth and keeping it closed.

The sceptics, who are many and stubborn, claim that, when it comes to human nature, if it is true that the opportunity does not always make the thief, it is also true that it helps a lot.

This is the stuff we're made of, half indifference and half malice.

As we shall see in this book's chapters, traditional societies are far more diverse in many of their cultural practices than are modern industrial societies. [...] Yet psychologists base most of their generalizations about human nature on studies of our own narrow and atypical slice of human diversity. [...] That is, as social scientists Joseph Henrich, Steven Heine, and Ara Norenzayan express it, most of our understanding of human psychology is based on subjects who may be described by the acronym WEIRD: from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies. [...] Hence if we wish to generalize about human nature, we need to broaden greatly our study sample from the usual WEIRD subjects [...] to the whole range of traditional societies.

Put another way, the chimpanzees' closest relative is not the gorilla but humans.

Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, — all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.

Down underneath, there wasn’t much difference between people and animals. War brought that out all kinds of ways.

“People keep coming up with new ways to maim their fellow man. I don’t know why I don’t despair of the human race.”

“Somebody once said people were the missing link between apes and human beings,” McDougald said wistfully. “Damned if he didn’t hit that one on the button.”

Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people we most despise.

The world cannot live at the level of its great men.

Man has created gods in his own likeness and being himself mortal he has naturally supposed his creatures to be in the same sad predicament.

Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can.