This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Do you know the first law of human nature? Self-propagation." - James Thurber and Elliott Nugent
"We are here because embedded in our human nature is the secret code for heaven’s self-realization. Heaven is certainly omnipresent, may even be omniscient, but is most likely not omnipotent. It needs our active participation to realize its own truth... Since we help heaven to realize itself through our self-discovery, and self-understanding in day-to-day living, the ultimate meaning of life is found in our ordinary, human existence." - Tu Weiming
"Truth should be the first lesson of the child and the last aspiration of manhood; for it has been well said that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature." - John Greenleaf Whittier
"There do remain dispersed in the soil of human nature diverse seeds of goodness, of benignity, of ingenuity, which being cherished, excited, and quickened by good culture, do by common experience thrust out flowers very lovely, and yield fruits very pleasant of virtue and goodness." - Lydia Maria Child
"The glory of human nature lies in our seeming capacity to exercise conscious control of our own destiny." - Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
"The root of the guilt problem lies in human nature itself, in our failure as human being to live in accordance with our potentialities and our vision of the good." - J. Glenn Gray
"Love is the great subduing, transforming, and harmonizing emotion in human nature. And it is love alone by which responsive love is awakened, or on account of which love is felt in return. Ultimately therefore, it is the love of God for man, and that alone, which redeems the man; because that love alone calls forth in return that love of man for God, by which man’s whole nature is transformed." - Shadworth Hodgson, fully Shadworth Hollway Hodgson
"The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself… not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps trans-humanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature… I believe in trans-humanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
"The lineaments of the new religion that we can be sure will arise to serve the needs of the coming era... Instead of worshipping supernatural rulers, it will sanctify the higher manifestations of human nature, in art and love, in intellectual comprehension and aspiring adoration, and will emphasize the fuller realization of life’s possibilities as a sacred trust." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
"He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he proposes to remove." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind. He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he proposes to remove." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"We are bound together by a more primitive and fundamental unity than any unity of thought and doctrine; we all have the same human nature and, considered in their extra-mental reality, the same primordial tendencies." - Jacques Maritain
"The ideal of asceticism represents moral effort as essentially sacrifice, the sacrifice of one part of human nature to another, that it may live the more completely in what survives of it." - Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater
"Financial markets are driven by human nature and have a propensity to go to excess. This means that periodic financial crises of one sort or another are virtually inevitable." - Robert Edward Rubin, aka Eddy Rubin
"Hatred is entrenched in human nature. It is as old as man, as old as man’s desire to expunge it. It slumbers in all of us. It can awaken at any time. I am not sure if we can eradicate hate from our hearts, but of this I am certain: It must always be our goal." - Anatoly Naumovich Rybakov
"There [are] two opposing drives in human nature: the drive toward closeness to other human beings, and the drive toward being independent and self-sufficient." - Anthony Storr
"Human nature is directed at an open-ended, endless, in-finite, all-embracing, comprehensive knowing and loving and knowing freely acting." - Leonard Swindler
"What is human nature? It is not the genes, which prescribe it, or culture, its ultimate product. Rather, human nature is something else for which we have only begun to find expression. It is the epigenetic rules, the hereditary regularities of mental development that bias cultural evolution in one direction as opposed to another, and thus connect the genes to culture." -
"Our power to think things out about human nature… is liable to be blocked by our fear of the full implication of what we find." - Donald Woods Winnicott
"Human beings can attain a worthy and harmonious life only if they are able to rid themselves, within the limits of human nature, of striving to fulfill wishes of the material kind." - Albert Einstein
"Our power to think things out about human nature is liable to be blocked by our fear of the full implication of what we find." - D. W. Winicott, fully Donald Woods Winnicott
"To feel much for others, and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfish, and exercise our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature." - Adam Smith
"In the general course of human nature, a power over a man's subsistence amount to a power over his will." - Alexander Hamilton
"What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary." - Alexander Hamilton
"Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God." - Alfred North Whitehead
"The distinctive characteristics of human nature are the freedom of the human consciousness and the human will." - Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
"Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Love is the sunshine of the soul. Without it we get hard and sour and we never grow into what we could be. Love sweetens the bitterness of experience and softens the core of selfishness that is inherent in human nature." - Author Unknown NULL
"Nothing spoils human Nature more than false Zeal." - Benjamin Whichcote
"History is invaluable in increasing our knowledge of human nature because it shows how people may be expected to behave in new situations. Many prominent men and women are completely ordinary in character, and only exceptional in their circumstances." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"What passes as “human nature” is at most one-tenth nature, the other nine-tenths being nurture." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"Each day, say ‘thank you’ for being alive. Each day, take responsibility for your physical performance. Each day, be careful of human nature [your own and others’]. Each day, behold the wonder of Mother nature." - Blanche DeVries Bernard
"It will generally be found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, an affect to dispise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples." - Charles Dickens, fully Charles John Huffam Dickens
"The man who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own dispositions, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he proposes to remove." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"The noble person tries to create harmony in the human heart by a rediscovery of human nature, and tries to promote music as a means to the perfection of human culture. When such music prevails and the people’s minds are led toward the right ideas and aspirations, we may see the appearance of a great nation. Character is the backbone of our human nature, and music is the flowing of character... The poem gives expression to our heart, the song gives expression to our voice, and the dance gives expression to our movements. these three arts take their rise from the human soul, and then are given further expressions by means of musical instruments." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"It is a principle of human nature to hate those whom you have injured." - Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
"It is human nature to hate him whom you have injured." - Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
"One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today." - Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
"Necessity is stronger than human nature." - Dionysius of Halicarnassus NULL
"The new religion will teach the dignity of human nature and its infinite possibilities for development. It will teach the solidarity of the race and that all must rise and fall as one. Its creed will be justice, liberty, equality for all the children of earth." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"It could be that human nature is stubbornly resistant to drastic change. Hence the fact that they who set their hearts on realizing revolutionary changes are as a rule hostile to human nature; they become antihuman, so to speak. They will do all they can to turn men into soulless material." - Eric Hoffer
"Nationalism, Socialism, Communism, Fascism, militarism, cartelization and unionization, propaganda and advertising are all aspects of a general relentless drive to manipulate men and neutralize the unpredictability of human nature." - Eric Hoffer