Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.

Friendships, in general, are suddenly contracted; and therefore it is no wonder they are easily dissolved.

I can be almost terminally grief-stricken because things are so dire, but at the same time, there’s a real lightheartedness about just the recoverability of life, of how things change, how they’re not the same, ever again.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

Of all the men that have run for president in the twentieth century, only George McGovern truly understood what a monument America could be to the human race.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

I hope that tomorrow we can all, wherever we are, join in expressing our grief at Diana’s loss, and gratitude for her all-too-short life. It is a chance to show to the whole world the British nation united in grief and respect.

What I really want to say: That what the world really needs is a real feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

People should not make me out to be like Jesus; I don’t walk on water.

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.

It may be, it just may be, that life as we know it with its humanity is more unique than many have thought.

Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

My sorrow, when she’s here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.

Our human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.

The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe.

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

Sadly, of course, there is real evil in the world. You watch the news, and you see all of the people suffering and so much cruelty.

Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion.

My mum passing away wasn’t funny, but that funeral and what I went through, the things that happened, looking back at it, there were funny moments. You have to be strong enough to look back at it, to sit and assess the situation.

What an ugly beast the ape, and how like us.

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.

Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.

Me only have one ambition, y’know. I only have one thing I really like to see happen. I like to see mankind live together – black, white, Chinese, everyone – that’s all.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Everybody’s got that split between the beautiful and fragile, the hard and the dark.

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

A Religion of Evolution: that, when all is said and done, is what Man needs ever more explicitly if he is to survive and ‚superlive,‘ as soon as he becomes conscious of his power to ultra-hominize himself and of his duty to do so.

We’re all sinners. Everybody you meet all over the world is a sinner.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.

Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.

If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.

Desire is the very essence of man.

It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.

We’ve gotta become the Martians. I’m a Martian – I tell you to become Martians. And we’ve gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever.

Wealthy men can’t live in an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

I have this feeling that the world is not in balance. And people are afraid, but we’re also starting to be really brave.

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.

Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.

Humanity at the centre of the primates, Homo sapiens, in humanity, is the end-product of a gradual work of creation, the successive sketches for which still surround us on every side.

The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.

And every human being is precious.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

Great is the power of habit. It teaches us to bear fatigue and to despise wounds and pain.

I never expect to see a perfect work from an imperfect man.