Repeal the Missouri Compromise - repeal all compromises - repeal the Declaration of Independence - repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man's heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.
Abraham Lincoln
Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.
Abraham Maslow
But this Christ or Redeemer took not upon him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham, that is, human nature, that in the nature which sinned he might make the expiation required.
Adam Clarke
Vinyl is democratic, as surely as the iPod is fascist. Vinyl is representational: It has a face. Two faces, in fact, to represent the dualism of human nature. Vinyl occupies physical space honestly, proud as a fat woman dancing.
Adam Mansbach
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
Everyone wants an iPhone, but it would be impossible to design an iPhone in China because it's not a product; it's an understanding of human nature.
Ai Weiwei
I'm naturally an optimist, but my basis for hope is rooted in my understanding of human nature.
Al Gore
My greatest joy comes from creativity: from feeling that I have been able to identify a certain aspect of human nature and crystallise a phenomenon in words.
Alain de Botton
In my own life, I think legends of supernatural, mythic things are really just a manifestation of the collective unconscious. So I don't really get freaked out. I mean certainly, you read about things people did to each other in the pursuit of some mystical or occult goal, and it's horrifying. But that's just human nature.
Alan Ball
Corruption, embezzlement, fraud, these are all characteristics which exist everywhere. It is regrettably the way human nature functions, whether we like it or not. What successful economies do is keep it to a minimum. No one has ever eliminated any of that stuff.
Alan Greenspan
I always believed in animal spirits. It's not their existence that is new. It's the fact that they are not random events, but actually replicate in-bred qualities of human nature which create those animal spirits.
Every economy exists, no matter what the level of democracy, has elements of crony capitalism. It's - given human nature and given the democratic structures, which we all, I assume, adhere to, that is an inevitable consequence.
When I'm doing a drama, I wish I was doing something funny. When I'm doing something funny, I wish I was doing something more serious. I think it's just human nature.
Alan Ruck
There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.
Alexander Hamilton
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.
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.
What breadth, what beauty and power of human nature and development there must be in a woman to get over all the palisades, all the fences, within which she is held captive!
Alexander Herzen
Modern reality TV sets up these competitive situations to show us real human nature.
Alexander Ludwig
In the days of Gary Cooper, James Stewart etc, film stars personified the better aspects of human nature.
Alexander Walker
The science of the mind can only have for its proper goal the understanding of human nature by every human being, and through its use, brings peace to every human soul.
Alfred Adler
Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.
Scientists and philosophers tend to treat knowledge, imagination and love as if they were all very separate parts of human nature. But when it comes to children, all three are deeply entwined. Children learn the truth by imagining all the ways the world could be, and testing those possibilities.
I wanted to answer big questions about humanity, about how it is that we understand about the world, how we can know as much as we do, why human nature is the way that it is. And it always seemed to me that you find answers to those questions by looking at children.
One of the best ways of understanding human nature is to study children. After all, if we want understand who we are, we should find out how we got to be that way.
Human nature stays the same, the one thing that stays constant, like death and taxes. And people still want good stories!
I think a writer is a describer. She describes society and human nature as she sees it. She has to be both typical of that society and alone within it.
It's human nature to be curious about people, and to be more curious about young people than old people. We want to cheer something on at the same time we want to tear it down. That's just so normal.
It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.
I am, as are most writers, just hugely obsessive, and so are many of my closest friends, who tend to be writers or scientists. It's a trait of human nature that I'm particularly in touch with. So I tend to project it onto my characters.
When I look back at my childhood on the Ayrshire coast, I recall a basic devotion to the idea that human nature and national character are as unknowable as the weather's rationale.
There's something in human nature that says we need to have at least one symbolic place where chaos and dark desires can live.
War is so complex; human nature is so complex. There's no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly.
I have been accused of being a Pollyanna, but I think there are plenty of people dealing with the darker side of human nature, and if I am going to write about people who are kind and generous and loving and thoughtful, so what?
Longing and desire goes further than instant satisfaction. That's human nature.
I have way more bravery than common sense, but you always assume things are going to be so difficult, and then when you're actually faced with them, you prevail. It's human nature.
Democracy in some ways is a very illogical political system. When you win an election, you have to preserve the institutions that would make it possible for your political enemies to win next time. If you think about it, that's almost antithetical to human nature.
Human nature is weak.
A novel can grant humanity even to those who act inhumanely, and by making men and women of monsters, it can offer not only a ground-level view of a particular conflict, but a descent into the substratum of human nature capable of the incomprehensible.
In a culture fueled by burnout, a culture that has run itself down, our national resilience becomes compromised. And when our collective immune system is weakened, we become more susceptible to viruses that are part of every culture because they're part of human nature - fear-mongering, scapegoating, conspiracy theories, and demagoguery.
I haven't lost faith in human nature and I haven't decided to be less compassionate to strangers.
Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
Filmmakers tell stories to explore human nature, which is always a flawed thing.
There surely is in human nature an inherent propensity to extract all the good out of all the evil.
I am urging Americans to be more careful about the kinds of media we support with our consumer spending. We've got to invest less in the media that glorifies violence and more in entertainment that lifts up the values of love, compassion, and the best in human nature.
I'm more into human nature than politics. But they're intertwined. Obviously, I live in civilization, so politics are part of my life.
Human nature means that institutions at some point lose their sense of mission. That sense of vulnerability drives Pimco.
It's human nature that if you get 20 positive comments and one negative one, you're going to focus on the negative. We all do that. It can be something that drags you down. It's easy to get bogged down with it, but I try to concentrate on the good things.
Human nature being what it is, people don't want to acknowledge that a problem exists when they know they have 35 other problems to deal with.
Half the time, when I first run onstage, I can't look directly at the audience just because of self-consciousness. It's human nature. Sometimes you feel like the man, and sometimes you don't. But sometimes that self-conscious energy is good for the show, it draws people in more.
Part of our human nature is finding new ways of being.
