Quotes about Human nature

Two things I recognize, O Lord, in myself: Nature, which Thou hast made; Sin, which I have added.

Human nature simply cannot subsist without a hope and aim of some kind; as the sanity of the Old Testament truly said, where there is no vision the people perisheth. But it is precisely because an ideal is necessary to man that the man without ideals is in permanent danger of fanaticism.

For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

It seems a pity that Psychology should have destroyed all our knowledge of human nature. It is a natural enough catastrophe; for the very act of changing it from a matter of common sense to a matter of scientific enquiry, labelled and separated as a science, involves a change which nobody has adequately noted.

Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary & virtuous function.

I have always understood the Nazis because I am of that sort by nature.

Christ is the Word of God in person. The Bible is the Word of God in writing. Both are the Word of God in the words of men. Both have a human nature and a divine nature.

I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men. The former are so much the freer.

The object of the Bible is not to tell how good men are, but how bad men can become good.

"Are you a devil?" "I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all devils in my heart."

The evil implanted in man by nature spreads so imperceptibly, when the habit of wrong-doing is unchecked, that he himself can set no limit to his shamelessness.