Quotes about Human nature
Man is always worse than most people suspect, but also generally better than most people dream.
- Reinhold Niebuhr
...in certain moods, no man can weigh this world without throwing in something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance.
- Herman Melville
If men were angels, there would be no need of government.
- James Madison
Great sins are great possessions; but levities and vanities possess us too; and men had rather part with Christ than with any possession.
- John Donne
Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.
- Alexander Hamilton
Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects.
- William Wilberforce
The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.
- Oscar Wilde
No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.... There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.
- Samuel Johnson
Take mankind as they are, and what are they governed by? Their passions.
- Alexander Hamilton
You cannot slander human nature; it is worse than words can paint it.
- Charles Spurgeon
And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.
- George Eliot
Souls do not wish to be bullied, but gently brought back; such is the nature of man.
- Francis de Sales