Human Nature Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old human nature quotes, human nature sayings, and human nature proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly. Anatole France
Human nature is not of itself vicious. Thomas Paine
There is a great deal of human nature in people. Mark Twain
Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control. Steven Pinker
It is not to be expected that human nature will change in a day. Frank B. Kellogg
It is in human nature to relax, when not compelled by personal advantage or disadvantage. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It's human nature to want to be with other people. Zoe Lister-Jones
Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive and potentially orderly and constructive. Margaret Mead
You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around - and why his parents will always wave back. William D. Tammeus
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. William James
Scenery is fine - but human nature is finer. John Keats
You can learn more about human nature by reading the Bible than by living in New York. William Lyon Phelps
We have not to construct human nature afresh, but to take it as we find it, and make the best of it. Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
Human nature is the same in all professions. Laurence Sterne
Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be. Abraham Harold Maslow
Whoever wants to be a judge of human nature should study people's excuses. Hebbel
You cannot slander human nature; it is worse than words can paint it. Charles H. Spurgeon
Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. Abraham Lincoln
Human nature is water, not stone. Marty Rubin
Human Nature is not a problem that can be fixed by rules and regulations. All solutions to the existing problems must be based on how people behave, not on how we think they should behave. Kirk Chisholm
Human nature is so constituted, that all see and judge better in the affairs of other men than in their own. Terence
Human nature is compassionate, is affectionate. Tenzin Gyatso
The more we study human nature, the less we think of men - the more of man. Theodore Tilton
There is no problem of human nature which is insoluble. Ralph J. Bunche
It is not in human nature for all men to tread the same path of development, as animals do of a single species. Maria Montessori
Human nature is above all things lazy. Harriet Beecher Stowe
Human nature is good, just as water seeks low ground. There is no man who is not good, just as there is no water that does not flow downward. Mencius
Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it. Bertrand Russell
Human nature refers to what is in people but which they cannot study or work at achieving. Xun Zi
It's human nature to always look at what your neighbor is doing. Richard Wilkinson
I got disappointed in human nature as well and gave it up because I found it too much like my own. J. P. Donleavy
That's human nature - the ups and downs. Jami Gertz
It's human nature to start taking things for granted again when danger isn't banging loudly on the door. David Hackworth
Nothing in human nature is so God-like as the disposition to do good to our fellow-creatures. Samuel Richardson
It is human nature to hate the man whom you have hurt. Tacitus
Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education. Henry Adams
The words human nature can be the greatest obstacle to human growth. Eugene J. Martin
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. Lord Chesterfield
Could we perfect human nature, we might also expect a perfect state of things. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Two purposes in human nature rule. Self- love to urge, and reason to restrain. Alexander Pope
There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish. John Keats
What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others. Georg C. Lichtenberg
Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing. John Stuart Mill
There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough. George Bernard Shaw
We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself. Carl Gustav Jung
Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature. Charles Dickens
Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything -- except his own nature. Henry Miller
Human nature is human nature, but it's a good system and a very reliable system. James Johnson
Human nature can find no there helper than love. Diotima's Speech
Human nature blames anyone except himself. Dale Carnegie
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. Albert Einstein
There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human- in not having to be just happy or just sad- in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time. C. JoyBell C.
To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature. Adam Smith
However exquisitely human nature may have been described by writers, the true practical system can be learned only in the world. Henry Fielding
Inconsistency with ourselves is the great weakness of human nature. Joseph Addison
The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power Alexander Hamilton
I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, human liberty as the source of national action, the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. John F. Kennedy
There surely is in human nature an inherent propensity to extract all the good out of all the evil. Benjamin Haydon
There surely is in human nature an inherent propensity to extract all the good out of all the evil. Benjamin Haydon
It’s human nature to gripe, but I’m going ahead and doing the best I can. Elvis Presley
The basic rule of human nature is that the powerful people speak slowly and the subservient people quickly – because if they don’t speak fast nobody will listen to them Michael Caine
No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people. William Howard Taft
The more one analyzes people, the more all reasons for analysis disappears. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature. Oscar Wilde
Human nature will only find itself when it fully realizes that to be human it has to cease to be beastly or brutal. Mahatma Gandhi
Fixed ideas of God and human nature are indispensable to the daily practice of men’s lives; but the practice of their lives prevents them from acquiring such ideas. Alexis de Tocqueville
Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won. C. S. Lewis
The voice of human nature is nothing but one prolonged cry. Alexander Dumas
Human nature is not obliged to be consistent. Lucy Maud Montgomery
There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism. Alexander Hamilton
There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism. Alexander Hamilton
Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity. Xun Kuang
Human nature is not black and white but black and grey. Graham Greene
Race hate isn't human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature. Orson Welles
Technology changes all the time; human nature, hardly ever. Evgeny Morozov
It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it. Denis Diderot
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. William James
Law is born from despair of human nature. Jose Ortega Y Gasset
Happy will it be for ourselves, and most honorable for human nature, if we have wisdom and virtue enough to set so glorious an example to mankind! Alexander Hamilton
The propensity to make strong emotional bonds to particular individuals is a basic component of human nature John Bowlby
That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them. A.S. Byatt
The world and the human condition are not essentially benign. F Ivan Morris