It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly. Anatole France
The life force is vigorous. The delight that accompanies it counterbalances all the pains and hardships that confront men. It makes life worth living. Somerset Maugham
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen. Aristotle
What does reason demand of a man? A very easy thing, to live in accord with his own nature. Seneca
It will be generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant examples. Charles Dickens
What characterizes man is the richness and subtlety, the variety and versatility of his nature. Ernst Cassirer
The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it. James Agate
Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius. Josh Billings
To educate the masses politically is to make the totality of the nation a reality to each citizen. It is to make the history of the nation part of the personal experience of each of its citizens. Frantz Fanon
A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless. W. H. Auden
The public prefers to be reassured. There are those whose job this is. There are only too many. Andre Gide
We don’t cut our nails to disarm ourselves. On the contrary; just to make us look more civilized, so we can hold our own in a far more desperate struggle than the one our ancestors fought with nothing but their claws. Luigi Pirandello
I have never understood this liking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment. Alan Bennett
How good is man’s life, the mere living, how fit to employ all the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy. Robert Browning
If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. Ralph Waldo Emerson
To be natural means to dare to be as immoral as nature is. Nietzsche
Observe any meetings of people, and you will always find their eagerness and impetuosity rise or fall in proportion to their numbers. Lord Chesterfield
Society is always trying in some way or another to grind us down to a single flat surface. Oliver Wendell Holmes
The people like neither the true nor the simple; they like novels and charlatans. Edmond and Jules De Concourt
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. Adlai Stevenson
Who can endure the crassness of the common herd? Are folk not presumptuous, warped and absurd; putting barriers between self and the thing they should see, self-measuring by self the whole community. LA Fontaine
We’re all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of god. Humanity is just a work in progress. Tennessee Williams
None of us can estimate what we do, when we do it from instinct. Luigi Pirandello
Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the state. Emerson
Man pines to live but cannot endure the days of his life. Edward Dahlberg
I guess there is about as much human nature in some folks as there is in others, if not more. Edward Noyes Westcott
Before man made us citizens; great nature made us men. James Russell Lowell
Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death; multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror. D. H. Lawrence
We hold the view that the people make the best judgment in the long run. John F. Kennedy
Alas for this mad melancholy beast man. What fantasies invade it, what paroxysms of perversity, hysterical senselessness, and mental bestiality break out immediately, at the very slightest check on its being the beast of action. Nietzsche
Scenery is fine, but human nature is finer. John Keats
Averageness is a quality we must put up with. Men march toward civilization in column formation, and by the time the van has learned to admire the masters the rear is drawing reluctantly away from the totem pole. Frank Moore Colby
Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them. Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the crowd herd or gang, it is a mass-mind that operates; which is to say, a mind without subtlety, a mind without compassion, a mind finally uncivilized. Robert Lindner
The fish in the water is silent, the animal on the earth is noisy, the bird in the air is singing. But man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth, and the music of the air. Tagore
The citizen is a variety of man; whether a degenerate or a primitive variety. Remy De Gourmont
We ride through life on the beast within us. Beat the animal, but you can’t make it think. Luigi Pirandello
Man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes. Herman Melville
Nature is rarely allowed to enter the sacred portals of civilized society. Hendrik Willem Van Loon
We have been god-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves. Arnold Toynbee
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. Lord Chesterfield
Mankind has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with mankind is man. James Thurber
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion. Oscar Wilde
The social moulds civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to real star patterns. Thomas Hardy
I am the people, the mob, the mass, the crowd. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me? Carl Sandburg
Know, man has all that nature has, but more; and in that more lie all his hopes of good. Matthew Arnold
Whenever man forgets that man is an animal, the result is always to make him less humane. Joseph Wood Krutch
By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to wide apart. Confucius
Man is a passion which brings a will into play, which works intelligence. Henri Frederic Amiel
It is obvious that the best qualities in man must atrophy in a standing-room-only environment. Stewart L. Udall
