637 quotes found
“Is it some law of human nature that you inevitably become whatever your first commander was?”
“That is the way with all of your kind… It is how you are made; you must all strive to claw your way over the backs of your fellow humans during the short time you are permitted in the universe, bre...”
“It is of the dubious inevitable side of human nature—like gold teeth and tinned salmon and bastard lacy valentines”
“It wasn’t human nature to leave things alone. It was normal for people to try to fix things that didn’t need to be fixed; or, infinitely worse, trying to fix things that were broken, because some t...”
“No group-living nonhuman primate is monogamous, and adultery has been documented in every human culture studied- including those in which fornicators are routinely stoned to death. In light of all ...”
“The way I see it, the impossible happens all the time; but we're so good at taking it for granted, we forget it was once impossible.”
“For there is not a single human being, not even the primitive Negro, not even the idiot, who is so conveniently simple that his being can be explained as the sum of two or three principal elements;...”
“It seems to be a law of human nature that those who live by the sea are suspiciousof swimmers, just as those who live in the mountains are suspicious of mountainclimbers.”
“There’s something about taking the cart back instead of leaving it in the parking lot…It’s significant…Because somebody has to take them in…And if you know that, and you do it for that one guy, you...”
“They had done nothing but wait, and had become poetical. How easy to the smallest building; how impossible to most men.”
“Like enthusiasts in general, he made no inquiries into details of procedure.”
“To weigh and evaluate a vast grid of information, much of it meaningless, and to arrive at sensible, if erroneous, conclusions, is a skill not to be sneezed at.”
“If you could have confidence in nature you would not have to fear. It would keep you up. Creative is nature. Rapid. Lavish. Inspirational. It shapes leaves. It rolls the waters of the earth. Man is...”
“There’s something about human nature which draws us to people who are authentic and makes us want to repel those that aren’t.”
“Never in your life have you been helpless—under somebody’s heel. You never lived where your enemies held power over you, power to run your life or wipe it out. You can’t understand. That’s how come...”
“Pride,’ observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, ‘is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; tha...”
“To believe that man’s aggressiveness or territoriality is in the nature of the beast is to mistake some men for all men, contemporary society for all possible societies, and, by a remarkable transf...”
